The Violet Hour
by Ragged Requiem
Summary: When Zero inherits Shizuka's curse, he finds that blood is no longer the only thing he craves insatiably. Kain can't watch the hunter fall in silence. Kaname may hold the key to his salvation. (SLASH, YAOI, M/M)
1. Chapter 1

_Once upon a time, there was a beautiful vampire princess, with hair as silver as moonlight and eyes as pink as cherry blossoms. More than anything, she longed for true love, but cruel fate betrothed her to a hateful and heartless prince who locked her up in a tower. The prince brought her humans to feed upon, but they were poor companions, full of fear and trembling. Until one day a man came who did not fear her, and in time her heart grew full with love for him. So great was her love that she could not bear for him to die, and so she made him a vampire and gave him her blood, and together they broke free from her cage._

_But the cruel and jealous prince would not allow the princess to be happy without him, and so he ordered her lover's death, and cursed her to wander the earth alone, hungering for the love she could never have. In her rage, she savagely destroyed her lover's assassins, and in the madness of her grief, she attacked even the assassins' children. The first, she bit, meaning to swallow his life, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw her lover, and she could not kill him. In the second child's eyes, she saw herself, lonely, unwanted, and cursed, and so she carried him away with her, that they might console each other._

_Pursued by vampires and hunters alike, and loved by no one save the stolen child, she fled from one lowly hiding place to another, until she could bear her misery no longer, and so offered her life and her power to one who promised revenge upon the cruel prince. And so the princess died, as all madly blooming flowers do, before her time. But her curse did not die with her._

* * *

><p>Zero Kiryuu pressed his back against the rough bark of the ancient oak and prayed to be left alone. He had no hope that his prayer would reach any particular deity; he had given up on hope long ago, on the night when his life had been ended in one savage bite. But his eyes as he prayed were focused on the moon, that shining crescent that had always followed him, faithfully lighting up the darkness of his world.<p>

"Zero?" Yuuki called softly.

Her voice was similar, and yet so different. It had that silken, predatory undertone now, like the fur of some sinuous jungle cat brushing past him in the night. She was a beast now, like them—like _him_. He had to remember that.

"I know you're there," she said. She was just on the other side of the tree now, stalking him like prey. "Do you need blood?"

"No!" Zero growled, overwhelmed with disgust and anger that only thinly covered the yawning well of fear within him. "No…"

It was no longer blood for which he thirsted. He couldn't tell her, of course. He would rather die than tell _anyone _what his traitorous body now craved, but Yuuki was the last person he would want to know. How ironic that it was her blood that had done this to him, changing from sweet nectar to bitter poison in the hunter's veins when her brother's fangs had pierced her throat. For Zero it had been like turning all over again, only this time he had sunk to a depth so low that even vampires looked noble by comparison. Why her blood had cursed him to this agony, he didn't know, and there was no one he could ask.

God, if only he had the courage to end it all… Zero squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to look at the moon anymore. It only illuminated the wretch he had become.

"I'm fine. Just go away," he forced out through gritted teeth.

"What's wrong, Zero? Why won't you talk to me?" There. That same plaintive desire to comfort him, the same one that had always worried its way through his defenses, and even though it sounded like a sick mimicry of itself, he could still hardly resist it.

"Did you think nothing would change?" he demanded with reckless desperation to drive her away. "It was _your _kind that destroyed my family."

He imagined that he could feel her pain at his words. But that, of course, was the old Yuuki, the one who only existed, now, in his memories, like the phantom pain of a limb that had been severed.

"You're lying," she answered. He groaned. "Please come out and talk to me, Zero. I still want to be friends. I still want to help you."

Zero slid to the ground. His uniform rode up and the rough bark scratched his back, but he couldn't get his legs to support him any longer. He struggled to form coherent words.

"Fine," he relented in a husky, breathless voice. "I will, but—tonight I need to be alone, and if you force yourself on me, then I won't forgive you."

There was a pause as she listened for the truth of his words. "All right, Zero," she murmured sadly. "If that's what you need."

* * *

><p>Zero tried to run, he really did, but the ground kept tilting and swaying, knocking him down, until he was reduced to crawling, and before long he forgot where he was going and simply collapsed. Reality blurred into a confused kaleidoscope of thoughts and images. The only constants were the piercing hunger and cold that tormented him.<p>

The hunter lay panting, sometimes groaning, in the light of the crescent moon that filtered through the veil of oak leaves, for how long he did not know. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that if he could only bear it long enough, the attack would pass. But this thought came and went like a reflection dancing on water.

How long he lay there alone, he could not know, but eventually he became aware that someone had joined him. There was someone warm and breathing, someone strong and alive. Zero was as helpless to resist the pull as a man falling through clear air.

* * *

><p>It was while Aidou was out on his nightly rounds, patrolling the campus for signs of any incursions by strange vampires or hunters, that he discovered Zero Kiryuu's condition. For a time, he simply observed from the shadows, but when he realized that the icy prefect was nearly insensible, he crept forward, until he stood directly over Kiryuu, taking in his state with an amused little hum.<p>

"Well, well," Aidou said to himself gleefully. "How the mighty have fallen."

He hadn't the faintest idea what might have induced this state in Kiryuu, but it was obvious from the scent the hunter was exuding—not to mention the way he was clawing the ground and panting—that he was suffering from a manic fit of lust.

Perhaps someone had hit him with a charm. Aidou almost wished he had thought of that himself. It was the perfect prank to play on someone as straight-laced and uptight as Kiryuu. Still, it must have been an awfully strong charm to reduce a vampire and hunter as strong as Kiryuu to this state. Anyone might have come along and killed the guy… Aidou frowned at that thought. _Had _someone meant to kill Kiryuu? Kaname wouldn't like that. He had plans for the hunter, Aidou knew, although he wasn't privy to them.

As he was mulling over these thoughts, Aidou realized that Kiryuu was not quite as out of it as he had been before. He seemed to be looking at Aidou, although not recognizing him. He would never have looked at Aidou like _that _if he knew who he was looking at. …Would he?

Aidou smirked. Perhaps he should take a picture to torment the asshole with after he had recovered. Kiryuu was so conceited; he'd probably die of mortification at the sight of himself rolling around on the ground panting.

Uh-oh. Now he wasn't just looking at Aidou, he was…oh, dear.

* * *

><p>Zero crawled, dragging himself weakly along the ground to the source of heat, and then cuddled into it, rubbing himself against the warmth. It smelled so good, so delicious—he wanted to get closer… For some reason the warmth was trying to get away. Zero panicked. No no, he wouldn't be left alone again—he had been abandoned in dark, frozen solitude for an eternity, and he would die if he couldn't touch another living being.<p>

* * *

><p>"Whoa!" Aidou yelped as Kiryuu yanked his feet out from under him. Christ, even when he was a drooling mess, the guy was strong. Much stronger than any D had a right to be. "Damn it, Kiryuu, get your paws off me!"<p>

The prefect made a keening little whine and sort of slithered up Aidou's body until he was sitting on the noble's thighs.

"Uhhh…" Aidou said, wondering how he was going to get out of this. Then Kiryuu started unbuttoning his pants and all rational thought fled.

* * *

><p>The warmth was a man. Zero could tell because the chest under his wandering hands was flat and hard, and he moaned to himself as he felt his way down the warm, firm body to the crotch. It wasn't as though he couldn't see, but everything was fuzzy and blurry somehow, and if he had been able to focus on his hearing, he would have realized that it sounded like he was underwater. Everything was muddled and confused except for scent and taste and touch, and those senses burned so bright that they were all-consuming.<p>

Zero craved so fiercely that thought was impossible; he was reduced to the state of an animal. All he knew was that he wasn't alone anymore, and he craved to taste another being, to hold him and be held, to be inside him or have him inside, anything, everything, all at once and again and again. He couldn't tell who the man beneath him was, but it didn't matter, because he was Zero's lover now, his dearest, his only, his everything.

Zero unfastened the frustrating barrier of clothing that separated him from his lover and exposed his manhood, coaxing it to life with his tongue and his lips. He was too incoherent to make a proper job of it; it was a sloppy affair—messy, dripping, juicy—wonderful. His lover's hand crept into Zero's hair and held his head in place, and Zero moaned, delirious with pleasure, and whimpered for more.

* * *

><p>That was how Kain found them, a little while later, lying tangled together on the dirty ground, Aidou's hands fisted in Kiryuu's hair, Kiryuu whimpering around the noble vampire's manhood. It was those incongruous noises and the strong scent of arousal that he had come to investigate. What he found was beyond shocking. It was something he had seen before and hoped never to see again.<p>

With a shock like icy water being dumped over his head, he was plunged back into _that _memory, when he had been a paralyzed child, unable able to move, to help—even to speak—and had been forced to watch his most precious person be violated. For a few seconds, he could do nothing but stare in dumbfounded horror.

Then he rushed forward, seized Kiryuu and wrenched him away from Aidou's grasp. He shoved the prefect away, and then he grabbed his cousin by the throat and pinned him against a tree.

"Wha—Kain!" Aidou spluttered. "What the fuck?"

"What the fuck?" Kain repeated disbelievingly. He didn't get upset often or easily, nor had he ever been particularly fond of the vampire hunter, but this was beyond the pale. "That's what I want to know, Hana! Just because you don't like a guy, you decide to _rape_ him?"

Aidou paled, and his eyes widened. "What?! I didn't—I wouldn't—" He looked around frantically, as if there might be someone to help him. "Damn it, Aka, at least let me pull my pants up! I can explain."

Kain narrowed his eyes, but back off. Aidou zipped himself back up and wiped some sweat off his face. He couldn't seem to stop staring at Kiryuu, who was still lying where he had fallen. The prefect looked dazed and out of it, as if he had been drugged.

"You're telling me you _didn't_ slip him something, you _didn't _lure him out here?"

"No, I didn't! I found him like that."

Kain's eyes blazed, and small flames danced around him for a moment. It took a moment to calm himself enough to put them out. He pinched the bridge of his nose and drew deep breaths.

"I—I mean—" Aidou began.

"Look at him!" Kain shouted, pointing at the silver-haired vampire hunter, who was now blinking around at the clearing with a confused expression. "_Someone_ did that!"

"Y-yeah, I know, I thought maybe someone was trying to kill him…"

"So you decide to take advantage of it?"

"No! Damn it, Aka, do you really think I'm that kind of person?"

Kain looked his cousin over critically and said nothing.

Aidou looked flabbergasted. "Aka…I swear, I was just checking on him, and then—he knocked me over and ripped my pants off. What was I supposed to do? He wanted it! Look! He came!"

Kain glanced sideways at Kiryuu, who was now trying to sit up unsuccessfully. There was indeed a small stain on the front of the hunter's pants.

"Right. Zero Kiryuu, the same guy who pulled a _gun_ in your face the last time you so much as touched him, suddenly decided he wants you."

"Yes!" Aidou shouted, stomping his foot. "He did! I don't know why, I guess he was drugged or charmed or something—I wasn't thinking, all right? But I didn't force him!"

Kain sighed wearily. "Just because you didn't force him doesn't make it okay, Hana. Christ…"

Aidou grumbled something unintelligible and kicked at the ground. Kain put his hands on his hips and shook his head. He felt relieved but also disturbed. If Aidou hadn't done this, then who had? Could it possibly have been an accident? Some hunter charm gone wrong?

There was a sharp intake of breath behind him, and he turned to see Kiryuu sitting up and looking cognizant at last. The violet-eyed hunter was looking back and forth between Kain and Aidou with a look of utmost shock and horror. His face was ghastly pale, and he was trembling slightly.

"Kiryuu…" Aidou began, moving toward him, but the prefect pulled his weapon, Bloody Rose, and leveled it at him unsteadily.

"Stay th' fuck away from me, vampire!" the boy snarled. His words were slurred, and the muzzle of the gun drifted up and down as though it were almost too heavy for Kiryuu to lift.

Kain hauled Aidou back and lifted his hands placatingly. "All right…take it easy…" he murmured. "No one's going to hurt you."

The hunter tried to get his feet under him, but his legs were obviously still wobbly, and he couldn't seem to manage standing, at least not while holding the gun on them. Kain bit his lip as the boy hit the ground for the second time, and dropped his gaze to his own feet. He had always known, in a vague sort of way, that Kiryuu had very beautiful and expressive eyes. He had mostly noticed it when those lavender orbs were flashing hatred and contempt at him. Just now it was too painful to keep watching Kiryuu try and fail to stand when he could so plainly read the shock, fear, rage, and humiliation in those eyes.

Aidou must have felt something of the same sentiment, because he tried to go forward and help Kiryuu up. Kain knew that was a bad idea, and so it proved when Kiryuu, despite being almost incapacitated, still managed to pistol-whip Kain's cousin across the face with a blow solid enough to knock the noble vampire over.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Aidou howled, clutching his cheek where the vampire weapon had burnt an impression into it. "Was that necessary? I was trying to help you!"

"Y'…done 'nough…_help'ng_…" Kiryuu growled. His words were even more slurred than before, and he had ceased trying to get up. It was all he could do to hold the gun on them.

Kain frowned. "Kiryuu-kun, we need to get you to a doctor before this gets any worse."

"No!" Kiryuu shouted. There was a flash of sheer, unadulterated terror in his eyes. "'ll…go 'way…on 's own. Please…" He swayed unsteadily on his knees. "Don' tell 'nyone."

"Kiryuu-kun, do you know who did this to you?" Kain asked.

The hunter nodded unsteadily. His head seemed to want to drop. "Yuuki," he muttered. Then the gun fell from his grip and he pitched forward, only just catching himself before his face hit the ground.

"Yuuki-sama?" Aidou repeated. The two cousins stared at each other in horror for a second. That put a whole new spin on things. Kain blew out a gusty breath.

"We can't just leave him here," Kain observed.

Aidou nodded, looking worried.

"But we can't just dump him in his dorm, either. What if someone else stumbles on him?" Kain continued.

"We could take shifts watching over him," Aidou suggested.

Kain paused. "I'll do it," he said.

"Damn it, Aka, for the last time—"

"_Hanabusa_." Kain gave his little cousin a stern look. "You've done enough, don't you think?"

Aidou looked irritated, but he shrugged. "Fine. Less work for me. I'll just finish patrolling, shall I?"

* * *

><p>The world swayed and tilted nauseatingly as Zero tried to lift his head. He couldn't seem to get it free of the ground. He couldn't lift his gun, either, but he stubbornly maintained contact with it. The Bloody Rose was his last vestige of control.<p>

The dark, vampiric aura nearby lessened suddenly, and Zero blinked, looking around as best he could. There was only one pair of legs where there had been two before. The legs appeared to be horizontal, but Zero reminded himself, dazedly, that he was the one who was horizontal.

He had to get a grip, but it was so hard. He felt as though he'd drunk a whole bottle of some vile liquor and then bashed his head into a wall several times. It was always like this, afterwards, but usually he slept through it. Falling asleep here, however, was out of the question.

* * *

><p>"Kiryuu-kun," Kain said, moving closer to the fallen prefect and crouching down so the boy could see him. He noted that Kiryuu's hand was still on his gun, although he couldn't seem to grip it. "Aidou's gone. It's just me now. Kain. I'm going to take you back to your dorm, all right?"<p>

A grunt was the only reply.

"All right, then," Kain said, mostly to himself. He picked up the gun, gingerly, hissing as the hunter metal burned his fingers. Kiryuu grunted angrily at the loss. Kain stowed it swiftly in the hunter's shoulder holster. "There, see? You still have it," he murmured.

Another grunt. This one sounded peevish.

"Now, let me just…" Kain slid one arm under Kiryuu's back, and another under his knees, and hoisted him. The man was heavier than he looked, packed with solid muscle, but Kain wasn't a noble vampire for nothing. The prefect dangled from Kain's arms like a boneless rag doll, and the sight of that smooth, ivory neck, together with the last vestiges of pheromones in the air, did not pass by Kain's notice. He determinedly fixed his eyes elsewhere.

With a light patter of feet on fallen leaves, Kain ran swiftly through the woods, his movements carefully controlled so as not to transfer any force to Kiryuu's body. When he reached the campus proper, he stuck to the shadows, using his innate vampiric affinity for darkness to help hide them. There didn't seem to be anyone around to see anything, but it never hurt to be careful.

He told himself these efforts were on Yuuki's behalf, but at the moment he felt a great deal more sympathy for Kiryuu's plight than for hers. If she really had done this, she must have been incompetently trying to seduce Kiryuu, or else she simply had a greater streak of cruelty than Kain had ever realized.

At last, Kain made it into the boys' dorms, and located the prefect's room by the lingering scents of Yuuki and Cross. Inside, Kain laid Kiryuu carefully on the bed, and took his shoes off. The hunter seemed to awaken a bit at this, and began to move a little.

"All right…it's okay…" Kain soothed nonsensically. He decided not to try removing any of Zero's clothing, but just slid him under the covers. "There. Just go to sleep. I'll make sure no one disturbs you."

Two slivers of violet fixed themselves on Kain with hostility and suspicion, and Kain smiled with what he hoped was reassurance. It was distressing somehow to see Kiryuu fighting so hard in such a weakened state, when there was no need for it. A moment later, the hunter's eyes fell shut again, but it was impossible to know whether he had decided to trust Kain, or whether he had simply succumbed to exhaustion.

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>: My intention for this story is to have fun pairing Zero with a number of different people but for him to wind up very eventually in a stable relationship with BOTH Kain and Kaname. I am working full time and writing a dissertation, so I am not updating quickly, and I make no promises._


	2. Chapter 2

Kain woke with a start to the sound of boisterous laughter and joking in the hallway outside. Unlike the Moon Dormitory, the Sun Dormitory was constructed for human occupation, and that meant that he could hear everything as loudly as if there were no walls at all. He wondered how Kiryuu could stand living there. Was it really worse to be surrounded by a dozen vampires than by hundreds of hormonal teenage humans?

Kiryuu's breath was even, and the prefect lay motionless in the same position that Kain had arranged him in, with the comforter tucked just under his chin. Satisfied by that, the sienna-haired vampire yawned and got up to stretch his long legs. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but he'd had a long night, and it was several hours past his usual bed time. Kain was a creature of regular habits.

The hunter's room was bare of any decoration, he noticed with a frown. No posters, paintings, or photographs adorned the walls. Not even a photograph tucked into the edge of the dresser mirror. The only thing that spoke of the presence of a personality residing in the space was a row of books lined up on top of the desk. They were hunter tomes, mostly, books of charms, history, case studies, and regulations. A few were battered copies of books assigned by the literature professor.

The last book in the row was as old as any of the hunter books, and far more worn. The corners of the paperboard cover were worn to nubs, and the gold embossing on the spine had flaked off so that only one word was visible: _Garden_. Kain's hand was drawn to the obviously well-loved volume. He opened the cover, and a whole chunk of the book that had come loose from the binding fell out. Chagrinned, Kain tucked it back in its place before reading the title page.

_The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett._

Kain turned the page.

_When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen…_

"Put that back," a voice growled.

Kain snapped the book shut and tucked it back in its place before turning to survey Kiryuu. The hunter was sitting up and swinging his legs out of bed. His movements were not exactly graceful, but not uncoordinated, either. Kain could not read the look on his face, but it was not pleasant.

"How are you feeling?" Kain asked, sitting once more in the uncomfortable desk chair.

Kiryuu glared and jerked his head at the door. "Out, vampire. Before I throw you out."

Kain's equanimity prickled at the deliberate goading. He drew a deep breath. "Not until I'm sure you're all right."

"What do you care?"

Kain's mouth opened and then closed again. Kiryuu had a point there. Kain had never concerned himself with the prefect's health before. Last night, it was the memory of that _other_ time that had spurred him to protect the hunter. Now that Kiryuu was recovered, how was it any of his business? Nevertheless, Kain felt uneasy with just leaving. He paused a moment, trying to think of an answer that wouldn't get him brained by some hunter weapon.

"It's my job to patrol for any unusual activity on the campus. I'd like to be reassured it's not going to happen again."

Zero flushed bright scarlet and turned away, folding his arms and staring out the window. Kain had never seen so much expression on the hunter's normally deadpan face.

"It won't."

"Unless another pureblood princess decides she wants you?" Kain asked pointedly.

Kiryuu whirled with a look of shock and horror. "What—what do you mean?" he demanded harshly. "What's _she _got to do with it?"

Kain blinked. "You said Yuuki was the one who did that to you. I'm guessing she tried to give you a love potion or something…?"

Kiryuu deflated. "I thought you meant—argh, never mind, why are still _here_?" He raked his hand through his messy silver hair, dislodging a dead leaf without noticing it. "I'm not saying I'm not grateful, but—" He broke off with a growl. "Just get lost."

And Kain had thought _Aidou_ was bad at thanking people.

"So it _was _Yuuki, then?"

"I don't see that it's any of your business."

"It's my business because I have to decide what to tell Kaname-sama."

"Don't tell him anything! It's none of his business."

Kain stood and walked to the window, keeping to the shady side of it. He needed something else to look at; Kiryuu's face was too distracting, reminding him of the previous night's encounter. The mid-morning light was bright enough to hurt the noble's eyes, but Kiryuu, who was drenched in sunlight, did not appear bothered by it. He was the least likely of vampires, this ex-human hunter. He did not understand the things that all vampires knew implicitly.

"I have to tell him," Kain said. "If it causes trouble, it'll be my fault for not reporting it."

"It won't cause trouble," Kiryuu insisted.

"It already has."

"What? Is Aidou going to claim I molested him?" Zero demanded scathingly.

Kain looked at the hunter curiously. "You remember that part?"

The prefect nodded grudgingly, looking away.

"No. Anyway, I think you could make a better case that he molested you than the other way around. If you wanted to make a case, that is."

Kiryuu looked surprised.

"_Do_ you want to?" Kain asked.

The hunter shook his head.

Kain looked out the window thoughtfully, weighing his options. After a while, he made up his mind.

"All right, Kiryuu-kun. I won't tell Kaname-sama. On one condition."

Kiryuu glanced up at him. Despite how much he must have wanted Kain's offer, there was a curious lack of hope in the hunter's eyes. All Kain could see was wariness.

"You have to convince me that this isn't going to happen again."

"It won't."

"I was thinking more along the lines of taking a sample of whatever Yuuki gave you and having Aidou analyze it. He could figure out what it was and make sure it's out of your system."

Kiryuu sighed deeply. "It…wasn't like that…it was her blood."

Kain blinked. "She gave you her blood?" It was a shocking statement.

"_Before_."

"Oh." Kain stared into space for a moment, thinking. That certainly explained a few things, like why the ex-human was so damnably strong, and seemed to have recovered from a possible fall to the End. "But what does that have to do with…"

"I don't _know_, all right?" Kiryuu looked so upset that Kain had to smile faintly. It was reassuring to see any expression aside from apathy on the hunter's face. Just to know that he was still alive in there, and not some creepy vampire-slaying robot, as he sometimes seemed, was reassuring.

"That wasn't the first time, was it?"

Kiryuu shook his head grudgingly.

"Then it won't be the last, either," Kain concluded, frowning.

"Don't tell Kuran," Kiryuu demanded. Then he paused, and his next words seemed to pain him greatly. "Please…Kain."

Kain's eyes widened in shock. That was undoubtedly the Zero Kiryuu version of throwing pride to the wind and begging. And rather than being insulted by Kiryuu's lack of honorifics, he was somewhat flattered that the hunter had even remembered his name.

"All right," he said quietly, "But no more collapsing in the middle of the woods by yourself. You need someone to keep an eye on you."

"No!" Kiryuu's response was immediate and horrified.

"Yes."

"You don't understand!"

"I think I do, actually. I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to tell you _who _it should be, but…someone you can trust, obviously."

"You saw…last night…it's always like that. I can't control it. If someone's there, I'll…ugh…" Kiryuu trailed off with a miserable look.

"Kaien has cells around here somewhere, doesn't he?"

"I don't want him to know."

Kain sighed. "Look, if you don't take _some _kind of precautions, he's going to find out anyway. You've only got two options, as far as I can see. Either lock yourself up somewhere, or find someone to baby-sit you."

Kiryuu's eyes shot baleful lightning at him.

"Actually, there's a third option. Ask someone who might actually be able to help you. Like, say, a pureblood?"

"No way."

"You say pure blood did this to you. I don't claim to understand how, but wouldn't they be likelier to know than us?"

"No. Way."

"All right, well, I'll look in our library, anyway. Maybe there's something…"

"Whatever," Kiryuu said sourly. Kain decided to interpret that as an expression of gratitude.

"Or maybe this has more to do with you being a hunter. You could ask Yagari-sensei."

"NO!"

"Well, what about the Hunters Association library, then?"

Kiryuu scoffed bitterly. "They follow me around and make a list of every page I read. If they found this out, it'd be all the excuse they'd need to put me down."

Kain frowned. He hadn't realized the ex-human was so distrusted and despised by his own kind—or the kind that he insisted were his own, anyway. Apparently they didn't see that the same way Kiryuu did. He found himself feeling even sorrier for the hunter than before. Perhaps that was why he made the offer.

"Give me your phone."

Kiryuu blinked at him suspiciously. "Why?"

"So I can put my number in. You can call me when you think it's going to happen again. I'll—watch over you."

Kiryuu gave him a frankly disgusted look and then pulled his gun on him. Kain was fairly used to being at the business end of that barrel now, and it didn't affect him the way it once had. He simply frowned.

"Not like _that_. Do you have to think the worst of everyone?"

"They don't often prove me wrong," Kiryuu replied darkly. "You put on a good act last night, but I know you were there before that…watching…did you enjoy the show?" The hunter's eyes glittered maliciously.

Kain swallowed. "It wasn't—I didn't—I was just—shocked."

"What? Never seen a D pleasure a noble before?" the hunter scoffed bitterly.

Kain found himself getting angry in his own defense. "Not all vampires are like that! If you must know, the reason I was so shocked is because…because it reminded me…"

He sighed and dropped heavily onto the end of Kiryuu's bed. "It reminded me of the time I saw my sister being raped by a pureblood. Okay? Are you happy now?" He continued in a mumble, "Except with her, I couldn't run in and stop it. It just kept going on and on…and I was forced to watch the whole thing…"

Kain glanced at Kiryuu finally. The hunter's face was turned away from him.

"Whatever," Kiryuu muttered at last. He pulled something from his pocket and threw it at Kain, who caught the object instinctively.

It was a phone. Kain smiled.

* * *

><p>"So? How'd it go?" Aidou asked when he woke that evening to find his cousin already up and getting ready for classes. Aidou's curly blonde locks had a tendency to form a bird's nest in his sleep, and Kain smirked at the absurdity of it. "Did you find out what happened to—"<p>

"Not now," Kain said quickly, with a significant look at the ceiling. It was the direction they looked in when they wanted to refer to Kaname without being heard by said pureblood.

Aidou looked puzzled, but shrugged it off. On their way to class, only Yuuki was present to hold back the hordes of screaming human girls. Aidou looked oddly disappointed.

* * *

><p>"So?" Aidou demanded, when they were on the fringes of the campus on that night's patrol. They weren't completely safe from being overheard there, but if Kaname wanted to listen, he would have to make a deliberate effort. "What's the story?"<p>

Kain sighed. "He says it started happening after Yuuki-sama changed back to her true form. Apparently he drank some of her blood while she was a human…"

"He did _what_?" Aidou seemed outraged. "Kaname-sama will—"

"I'm sure he already knows about that," Kain butted in before his cousin could go off on a tiresome tirade. "He's not stupid."

Aidou grumbled for a while. Kain let him work off some steam by kicking trees and throwing rocks at things. When his cousin was calmer, Kain continued.

"I'm sure Kaname already knows about Kiryuu's, er…problem, too. Apparently it's been going on for a while. So I'm not going to bother him with what happened last night."

Aidou thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "Thanks," he said.

Despite how often Aidou managed to screw up and get himself slapped silly by their fearless leader, Kain knew that each incident pained his cousin more than he would ever admit. It wasn't too likely, as far as Kain could see, that Aidou would have gotten in trouble in any case, seeing as how Kaname barely tolerated Kiryuu's existence, but Aidou surely didn't want to risk it.

"Kaname's got a lot going on already, so I wonder what he's planning to do about Kiryuu's problem…" Kain dangled this statement in front of his cousin like bait.

Aidou halted, and then whirled excitedly. "Hey! Maybe we should take care of it! I bet Kaname would be really pleased with us if we helped him out."

It was exactly the kind of stupid idea that Aidou was always getting into trouble for, and Kain would never have solicited the suggestion if it weren't for the fact that he really was sure that Kaname must already know about Kiryuu and either not care or not have a solution.

Kain pretended to think about it for a while. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try," he agreed finally.

Aidou immediately started bouncing theories and ideas off his cousin. Kain could hardly understand some of the more scientific ones, but others were all too clear.

"I'm pretty sure he'll knock your teeth out if you try to take a blood sample," he told Aidou with amusement. "I think you should try to do as much research as you can without involving Kiryuu, okay? I'll be in charge of baby-sitting him."

"Heh." Aidou smirked knowingly at Kain. "Baby-sitting. Right. I'll give him some credit; he's not half bad when he uses his mouth for something other than threatening people."

Kain gave his cousin a dirty look. "I'm not going to take advantage of him."

Aidou rolled his eyes. "Shit, you'd think I was talking about Ruka or something."

"Leave her out of this."

"Yeah, yeah. Now, come on. Let's go back to the library!"

Normally Kain would have rolled his own eyes, but it just so happened there was a book that he wanted to find.


	3. Chapter 3

When a week had passed without any word from Kiryuu, Kain took it upon himself to call on the hunter. He knew the boy was still alive, since he saw him twice a day during change-overs, but it was impossible to discern anything else underneath that mile-thick coat of ice the prefect sported. Kain had always supposed, before, that it was hard to get a read on the hunter because there wasn't much there to read. Now he knew that wasn't the case. At the very least, the ex-human had to be suffering from the fear of when he would fall prey to another attack. But there was no trace of any such thought on the prefect's sculpted features.

Kain skipped his first class to search for Kiryuu. This was a common enough occurrence that it did not occasion any comment. Having never been used to the sort of regimented schooling that humans received, the vampires of the night class tended to treat their classes as an offering rather than a requirement. After all, there was no particular meaning or value to degrees in their world. If you wanted or needed to learn something, then you learned it, without a lot of fuss about when or where or how. Knowledge was important; credentials were not.

The sienna-haired vampire's first stop was Kiryuu's dorm, where he managed to startle a few humans half out of their wits. To the Day Class members, Kain might as well have been a tiger—something beautiful and powerful, to be admired from a safe distance.

"Have you seen Zero Kiryuu?" Kain asked a passing human, when he found the hunter's dorm room empty.

The boy shrugged. "He might be in his room. Sometimes he just doesn't answer the door."

"Are you a friend of his?" Kain asked, trying to get a sense of whether this boy was likely to have accurate information.

The boy snorted. "Kiryuu doesn't really _do_ 'friends'."

Kain frowned, pondering that. "Is there anywhere else he might be?"

"Try the chairman's house. He goes there pretty often."

There was a hint of hostility in the human's words, as if he suspected Kiryuu of being unfairly favored by Cross. Kain nodded his thanks and set off for the chairman's place.

The house was well-protected by hunter charms, making it impossible for Kain to get a read on the auras or scents of the occupants, but by chance a window had been propped open a few inches, and he was able to hear Yuuki speaking with her adopted father. From the drift of their conversation, he learned that Kiryuu had gone into town, and that Yuuki was worried about him. She suspected that he was doing a little solo hunting to blow off steam, and wanted the chairman to rein him in. Cross parried her concerns gently.

Kain slipped away, strolling along a path of shadows beneath the trees that took him back to his classroom. When he paused outside to look in at Yagari lecturing, however, he found that he couldn't bring himself to go inside. His feet took him onward, to the campus gate, and then across the few miles into town.

It was a sleepy little burg, on the surface, full of humans with good jobs and comfortable lives. The downtown was lined with shops and restaurants, interspersed with office buildings and apartment complexes. On the edges of town, the streets were crowded with small houses sitting in tidy yards, with well-maintained sidewalks lining the roads.

Under the surface, however, there was a festering sore that sometimes erupted with violence. The reason for it was the same reason that had drawn Cross to the location. The town was centrally located between the territories of a number of different vampire families, as well as between the Vampire Council and Hunter Association headquarters, and for that very reason the area was neutral ground, or perhaps it would be better called no man's land. It belonged to no one, and so it was where ex-humans tended to wash up at when they were nearing the End.

There were many places like it, all over the world. In a few decades, the humans would begin to realize the danger, and move away. The vampires would follow their prey, and the hunters would follow theirs. Then the whole cycle would start up again, somewhere else. But for now, the town was happy to remain ignorant of the infection just beneath its skin.

Kain knew the hot spots well enough. There were several abandoned warehouses downtown, where the railroad that had once served as an artery of trade now lay rusting and unused. The buildings rested up against cliffs of rock that had been blasted by dynamite to make way for the railroad, and the soft limestone earth was porous with caverns where the desperate creatures had been driven by years of the hunters' scourging. How deep the caverns went, no one knew, but no matter how deep the hunters pursued them, the pitiful wretches always went deeper, melting away like water into sand, only to surge forth once more when the time was right.

Kain circled the area, using a charm to keep his aura suppressed and his presence unnoticed. If a hunter had been there, the warehouses would have been empty, except for the rats and the detritus of their feedings, but in the largest building, Kain spotted several E's moving furtively behind windows whose glass had long since been scattered. On the first floor, the windows and doors were boarded up with plywood that had been painted with dozens of graffiti tags and not a little blood, but in the upper stories, the windows gaped openly at the sky like empty eye sockets.

That should have been the end of it. E's were present, therefore no hunters were nearby. But Kain hesitated, and moved closer, skulking along the edge of the building. The only auras he could feel were those of E's, flickering faintly like candles about to be blown out. Faintly, he detected something—not an aura, but a scent. It wasn't Kiryuu's scent, but it was a scent he had come to associate with Kiryuu during the past week. It was the heady aroma of sex pheromones that had pervaded the clearing where he had discovered Aidou and Kiryuu's tryst.

Kain knuckled his eyes, telling himself that there was no way that scent was Kiryuu's, that he should go home and sleep it off and apologize to the universe for thinking so ill of the hunter. After all, there was no way—_no way_—that someone like Kiryuu, who despised vampires with every particle of his being, would stoop to fornicating with beings that were no better than the diseased rats they shared their squalid space with.

And yet…

Inside the warehouse, Kain slipped through the darkness like a ghost, skirting squares of moonlight cast from the empty windows. He climbed sagging, half-rotten staircases and waded through drifts of trash. The place reeked of death and madness, but the scent of desire beckoned him onward, until he came at last to the place he had sought.

In the moonlight, Kiryuu's face seemed to glow with some ethereal light. For a moment, all Kain saw was the hunter—his hard body, all sinuous muscle and taut sinew, twisting and arching, clinging, with the sweat upon him like dew on the morning grass and his lips parted like a rose just opening to the sun, cries of shameless longing and giddy ecstasy upon them.

Between the long, powerful legs of that silver-haired seraph lay a filthy, revolting swine, and Kiryuu opened his body to be violated by it with wild and rapturous abandon. In the shadows, more beasts lurked, stinking of hunger and greed.

Part of Kain's mind analyzed the situation coolly, even as another part reeled with abject horror, just as part of him had carried him here, to this place, knowing what he would find, while another part had insisted that no such scene could exist even in nightmares. There were six level E's. Kain could not fight so many alone, not without using his fire, and using fire would risk turning the building into an inferno that might trap Kain and Kiryuu. The hunter would not be able to help, not for hours yet.

One the E's noticed Kain, then, and gibbered fearfully at him, but since Kain was suppressing his aura, it did not seem to realize that he was a noble vampire. Normally the creatures fled before Kain's ilk like cockroaches from sunlight. The beast had lost the use of words, but it was still capable of instinct and avarice, and the meaning of its simian gabbling was clear. It was staking its place in line.

Kain growled as his own instincts flared—the instinct to crush an insect that had dared to annoy him—and the E shuffled back, acknowledging Kain's superior strength. The E's must have thought that Kain was one of them, more recently fallen than themselves, perhaps. Since they could not feed from each other, they tolerated one another for the most part, except when a feeding frenzy broke out. Fortunately for Kain's sake, and Kiryuu's, they no longer possessed human intelligence, only a kind of animal cunning. They were too stupid to realize that Kain was far too clean and well-dressed to be one of them.

The E's had been fixated on watching their target greedily, but now they were all regarding Kain warily, and suddenly Kain realized that even Kiryuu had turned his slightly muddle violet gaze on the noble vampire. Worse, the sight of Kain seemed to have sparked a new hunger in Kiryuu, as he sniffed the air with an eager look. Kain barely had time to realize that this could be bad before the room exploded with violence.

It happened in seconds. Kiryuu started to wriggle out from underneath the wretch atop him, reaching for Kain, but the E didn't want to let him go. Kain had been under the impression that Kiryuu was as clumsy and weak during these episodes of his as he was after them, but that was wrong. Terribly wrong, as Kain found out when Kiryuu lifted one long leg and kicked the E on top of him through a wall. The E burst into a cloud of dust from the sheer impact, and for just a moment, Kiryuu's hunter aura flared. At that, all hell broke loose.

The other E's took no more notice of their felled comrade than a piece of trash. Instead they fell upon Kiryuu like sharks on a bleeding seal, with fangs bared and eyes flashing scarlet. Kain reacted instantly, grabbing the nearest one and ripping its throat out. It was a struggle to suppress his instinct to incinerate them, but he couldn't risk burning Kiryuu with them. He stopped suppressing his noble aura, however, hoping to draw them away from Kiryuu.

The gambit worked. Too well. Not only did the E's in the room turn their hunger on Kain, but more E's, from other rooms, began moving in his direction. Kain began to panic. He had no weapon, so he fought them with only his claws, slashing their eyes and their throats. Jets of blood, hot and sticky, splashed his face and filled his mouth with the foul taste of rot.

Miraculously, Kiryuu was fighting, too. Kain had never seen the hunter fight before, so he couldn't make any comparison, but in Kiryuu's altered state, his style was wild and undisciplined. He ripped his opponents apart with his bare hands, like a feral animal, without even bothering to look at them. His eyes remained only on Kain, still alight with fierce desire. It was an eerie sight.

"Come on!" Kain called to the hunter when the E's in the room were nothing more than dust and blood stains. He grabbed Kiryuu by the wrist and jerked him forward.

Kiryuu came willingly, stumbling clumsily after Kain, but instead of running with the noble, he glommed onto him, tripping him up and falling on top of him. Kain squirmed back to his feet, trying to evade the hunter's questing hands and mouth.

"Kiryuu, _please_, we've got to get out of here."

The hunter's hand, dripping with blood, found its way into Kain's underwear and around his cock. Kain gasped and shuddered with pleasure, even as he was nauseated by the slippery substance Kiryuu was smearing all over it. Fortunately, they were interrupted as two more E's entered the room, and there was another rain of blood as Kiryuu dispatched one E with each hand. Kain had time to briefly wonder how much deadlier Kiryuu might be in his right mind, and if the Hunters Association knew what a weapon of mass destruction they had on their hands.

This time Kain was ready for Kiryuu's slippery seduction, and he worked with it instead of against it, scooping the hunter up in his arms. Kiryuu complied easily, wrapping his legs tightly around Kain's waist and allowing himself to be carried. He lavished Kain's ear with moist kisses and nibbles, and teased his nipples, all the while grinding his hips against Kain's. It was a delicious torture, one that Kain didn't need as he slogged his way through the death-trap of a building.

Keeping track of all the auras pursuing them was a task made more difficult by Kiryuu's persistence. At the intersection of two hallways, an E ambushed them, swiping at Kain's throat with yellow claws. Kiryuu punched his fist through the beast's head without pausing his kisses, and Kain stumbled, knees weak with panic, shock, and lust.

At last they made it outside. Persuading Kiryuu to crawl through the hole in the wall that served as the only entrance or exit was difficult, but somehow they made it through in a tangle of limbs. A last E hissed at them from the darkness of the building, but it did not pursue them, sensing, perhaps, that it would not long survive leaving its nest.

Kain lay panting on the concrete with its carpet of cigarette butts and spent shell casings. Kiryuu was stroking both their cocks avidly, kissing every bit of Kain that he could reach. Not until the hunter began trying to remove Kain's pants did the noble vampire regain the energy to move. He wrestled Kiryuu back into his arms and carried him away into the darkness.

* * *

><p>Zero's lover was being very frustrating. He was a strong one, this time, not one of the shy, hungry ones that hid in the dark places. This one was deliciously strong. His warmth blazed bright like a furnace, sinking into Zero's skin and relieving the deathly cold. The hungry ones had wanted Zero's lover, too, but they couldn't have him. He belonged to Zero now.<p>

Except that he kept moving them. But now they were in a warm, sheltered place, and that was good, because Zero was tired of waiting. He would not be delayed again. He had been waiting for so long in the empty, frigid darkness. Zero pushed his lover down on the soft ground and held him there. He climbed atop him and sank down on his lover's manhood, letting it open him, holding it inside himself.

It was so good. So perfect, so right. He began to move, caressing the beloved flesh with his body, setting off sparks in his blurry sight as the hard length of flesh rubbed up against the nerves inside him. He bent forward and kissed his lover eagerly, trying to show him with all his actions how loved he was, how welcome he was, how if only he would never leave Zero alone again, he could dwell in Zero's body forever…

The pleasure built up, higher and higher, like an orchestra building to a crescendo. Zero's nerves thrummed like the strings of a bass, his muscles clenched and trembled wildly, until at last in a sweet burst of ecstasy he leapt from the peak of bliss, hung suspended in mid-air for a few short moments as his body was wracked with electric pleasure, and then floated down, as softly as a feather, to ground once more.

He lay on his lover's chest, listening to his heart beating and his lungs pumping, as regular and comforting as the comings and goings of the sun and the moon. His lover's hands were in his hair, stroking it, and there was such a quiet yet exquisite pleasure in the gesture. The scent of his lover surrounded him—an earthy, woody, smoky scent.

Zero's eyes drifted open gradually. They were in a house—in a living room, to be specific, sprawled in front of a stone fireplace where a fire blazed and crackled, its flames so large that they licked at the chimney flue and the grate. Zero stared absently at the fire, as the awareness that there was something odd about it stole slowly over him. At last he realized that there was nothing feeding the fire—no logs, no gas jets, nothing. His mind turned this thought over a few times.

And then, with horrible, unforgiving clarity, he realized. There was a split-second when he saw the knowledge coming, and tried to evade it, but he could not. His memories hit him like a freight train, crushing the foolish thoughts of lovers and warmth and comfort and mangling them into unrecognizable detritus.


	4. Chapter 4

Kain felt the moment when it happened. The moment when Kiryuu realized.

The madness had begun fading from Kiryuu's eyes the moment he had orgasmed, but for long minutes the violet orbs had been filled with only a sort of hazy puzzlement, as if he were slowly waking up. The hunter had nuzzled at Kain's sweaty chest and curled up on top of him, and Kain, caught up in the swirl of sex-fueled emotion, couldn't help but stoke the boy's hair.

Kain hadn't meant to have sex with Kiryuu. He had only meant to get them both clean. He had broken into a human house that was unoccupied, with mail piled up in the box, just intending to use the shower and find some clean clothes. But then Kiryuu had knocked him down—and didn't Kain feel differently about Aidou's story now—climbed on top of him, and ridden him like a racehorse. Kain probably could have forced the hunter off, but what then? None of the possibilities seemed very pleasant, especially after seeing what Kiryuu had done to his last sex partner, and after all Kiryuu's body _was_ very pleasant, so he let it happen, and there was no going back now.

With Kiryuu still clasped, quiescent, in his arms, Kain's mind had just begun to skirt the ragged edges of sleep, exhausted by fighting and fucking, when he felt it happen. He felt Kiryuu realize everything—what had happened, where he was, who Kain was, who _he _was. The hunter's body went rigid, and then he was struggling away from Kain as though he were as repulsive as the flea-infested beasts whose fluids still covered him.

"Kiryuu," Kain said in a pained voice, reaching for him.

"Don't touch me!" the hunter cried, pushing himself backward until he hit the sofa, and huddled against it, his knees drawn up to his chin, his hands held defensively before him.

"Kiryuu…you…"

"Don't!" the hunter repeated. He was shaking. He wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his face in his knees. "Don't look at me," he sobbed.

Kain bit his lip, using the pain to distract himself. "I didn't mean to take advantage of you, I—I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?"

There was a burst of hysterical laughter from the Kiryuu-bundle huddled against the couch. "_That's _what you wanna ask me?"

Kain paused. He considered what there was to ask about having found the hunter mid-coitus with a level E. _Did you plan to do that, or was it an accident? Was that the first time, or is that how you've been handling this all along? If I hadn't found you, what would have happened when the madness faded but you were too weak to get out of there? Would you have kept pretending to be one of them? Or would you have fought them knowing it would be your death?_

Kain wasn't sure he wanted to know the answers to those questions. And this wasn't the right time to ask or answer them.

"Yes," he answered Kiryuu. "That's what I want to ask you. Can you forgive me for taking advantage of you?"

Kiryuu tugged at his blood-stained silver hair, suppressing the hitching of his tears. Kain had never imagined that he would ever be allowed to see the hunter cry. He felt ashamed, as though he were violating something sacred.

"You're a fucking moron," Kiryuu growled. His voice was slurring again, as it had the other night.

Kain blinked at the non-answer. It was too soon to talk about anything, he realized. They needed to wash up and find clothing and go home and sleep for a day or so before anything could be resolved.

"Can I—can I help you get clean?" he asked the hunter hesitantly.

A pause. "Whatever," Kiryuu mumbled.

Kain moved to him, making noise deliberately to warn of his approach, and the hunter lifted his head from his knees finally, looking up into Kain's eyes for just a moment before turning his gaze away resolutely. Kain saw fear in the glassy violet eyes, and dread, distrust and suspicion, and, most of all, hatred. Not hatred of Kain. Self-hatred. Kain knew, then, that he could never ask Kiryuu any of those other questions, but that he might have to suffer knowing the answers anyway.

Kiryuu managed to stay awake, though his eyes kept falling shut before blinking open once more, until Kain had him in the bathtub. Then he drifted off for good.

The blood clung obstinately to every crack and crevice of skin, and it had to be scrubbed and scraped vigorously. Kain had been fully clothed during the fight, but Kiryuu had been naked. Worse, blood was not the only substance that had dried onto Kiryuu's skin. Between his legs was ample evidence that he had been in the warehouse for quite a while before Kain had found him. By the time the noble vampire finally got him clean, he had acquired an intimate familiarity with every last nook and cranny of the hunter's body. He thanked whatever powers might be that Kiryuu had been unconscious throughout.

Kain dressed the hunter with over-large clothing scavenged from one the humans' dressers—sweatpants and a t-shirt. Then he burned his own blood-stained clothing in the humans' fireplace until the only evidence that remained of the events in the warehouse were ashes and memories.

He had planned to take Kiryuu home, but by the time Kain finished burning the clothing, dawn had broken over the horizon, and it was too late to sneak in. Yuuki would be performing her usual patrol after class change-over, and then the Day Class students would be roaming the campus. So he tucked the prefect into a bed, and sat down on the covers on the other side, planning to watch over Kiryuu until he woke. He lay down after a few minutes, just planning to rest his eyes, and before he knew it, he was fast asleep.

* * *

><p>When Zero woke, he did not know where he was. There had been several such occasions over the course of his short life, and none of them had been pleasant. Instinctively, he pretended to still be sleeping, though his rigidity would surely give him away, until he could ascertain the situation. Then he scented the earthy, smoky aroma of a certain noble vampire, and it all came rushing back to him, the memories overwhelming him like a bitter flood, dragging him under.<p>

With a deliberate force born of years of practice, Zero shoved the memories into a closet deep in his mind, slammed the door on them, and nailed several planks over it.

Kain was sleeping on the bed beside him, fully clothed in cheap, ill-fitting garments. Zero's eyes lingered over him for a longer time than he would have admitted. He had never had the opportunity to observe a vampire sleeping. The noble's ridiculous tawny hair was not a dye job, he noted with mild surprise. Even his brows and lashes had a sheen of dark gold. Zero remembered the feeling of Kain inside him, filling him, driving him mad with pleasure, and he turned away abruptly, choked with self-loathing so thick and black that he wanted to die.

"Hey," a husky, sleepy voice said behind him.

* * *

><p>Kiryuu flinched at the sound of Kain's voice, and for some reason that made Kain want to soothe him. But when he reached out to stroke the hunter's shoulder, Kiryuu smacked his hand away with enough force to leave it stinging painfully.<p>

"Sorry," Kain offered.

Kiryuu glared at him balefully. "You tell anyone—Aidou, Kuran, Cross, anyone—and you're dead. Understand?"

Kain nodded. Kiryuu glared at him a little more, and then turned away and began ransacking the room until he found a pair of decently-fitting shoes and started lacing them up.

"Kiryuu," Kain said, trailing after him, "wait. Don't leave just yet. We need to talk, and we might as well do it here."

"I can't think of anything I want to talk about," Kiryuu said gruffly, making for the front door with a grim face.

Kain reached out and slammed shut the door just as Kiryuu opened it, putting himself perilously close to the fuming hunter. Rather than attacking, however, Kiryuu sprang away like a startled deer.

"Well, we have to," Kain told him. "Because…" He paused, gathering his courage. "Because you can't keep—_handling it_—that way."

He expected Kiryuu to deny the charge hotly, maybe even threaten to kill him again. In fact, he _wanted_ the hunter to deny it. Instead, Kiryuu's creamy skin turned an even chalkier shade of pale, and his eyes darted around as if searching for an escape hatch. That was all the confession Kain needed. His stomach sank, and he exhaled gustily, sagging against the door.

"How long?" he asked, dreading the answer. "How long has this been going on?"

"It's none of your business," Kiryuu answered tightly.

"Well, I'm _making _it my business. 'Cause if you think I can let you do that again, you obviously don't know me at all," Kain told him.

Kiryuu stubbornly said nothing.

"I mean, I guess I understand that before, you didn't want anyone to know, but…this time…you could have asked me…or Aidou… Why did you let me give you my number if you weren't going to ask for help?"

"I was trying to get rid of you, dumbass," Kiryuu snapped.

"Are we really worse than _E's_?" Kain demanded.

Kiryuu's violet eyes flashed with anger. "Yes!" For a moment, Kain felt offended to the core, but then Kiryuu continued, eyes downcast, in an angry mutter. "E's are nothing. Just animals. I can kill them when I'm done with them. I can't kill you or your stupid cousin…"

"I would have thought you'd be too proud to lower yourself to that," Kain said honestly. Kiryuu had always seemed the epitome of stubborn pride to him. It was one of the things he admired about the hunter.

"Then we have very different ideas of pride."

Kain didn't know what to say to that, so he simply said, "I can't let you do it again. I _can't_. Just the thought of it kills me."

Kiryuu snorted. "Everyone always has some horrible thing they think they _can't_ bear. Something so awful they think they couldn't survive it. But you know what the truth is? When those things happen? You just go on living. One stupid, pointless day after another…"

Kain bit his lip, wishing the hunter weren't so fatalistic. "Then I _won't_ let you do it. I'll stop you, by force, if I have to."

Kiryuu stared at him with suspicion and just a hint of curiosity. "What do you care?"

Kain didn't know the answer to that question, either. Why _did_ he care so much? The hunter was beautiful, admirable, but Kain had never taken any special notice of him before he had found him in the woods with Aidou. The reason didn't matter, however. Kain had never been one to lose himself in introspection. What was most important was stopping Kiryuu from degrading himself so appallingly again.

"I care," was all he said.

Kiryuu snorted and looked away. "Whatever. Try and stop me, then, if you think you can."

Kain decided to take that as an invitation.

* * *

><p>"Where've you been?" Ruka asked when Kain slipped back into the Moon Dorms just in time to join everyone in walking to class.<p>

He shrugged. "Had some stuff to do."

"In town?"

Kain nodded. She waited for an explanation, but none came. Ruka eyed him thoughtfully from time to time during that day's classes, but Kain had never been very forthcoming about his private affairs, so she let it go in the end.

There was another person with his eye on Kain. Kaname. Kain had used a charm to suppress the hunter's scent, which he knew still clung to him despite washing. Of course, vampires used that charm all the time, since it was considered rude to go around reeking of one's sexual partners. But Kaname, being extraordinarily powerful even for a pureblood, must have sensed the hunter's aroma on Kain anyway, because he glanced back and forth between the tawny-haired vampire and the silver-haired hunter several times during the class change-over.

* * *

><p>During his lunch break, Kain went to Kiryuu's dorm room. This time he entered by the second-story window, which had been propped open almost like an invitation, instead of the door. Invitation or no, Kiryuu had that damn gun of his drawn on him before he even cleared the sill.<p>

Kain lifted his hands in a gesture of appeasement. "Should I have knocked?"

"What do you want, vampire?"

Kain turned his back on the hunter, shut the window, and then sat on the sill, since it didn't seem like Kiryuu was going to offer him another seat. The hunter huffed and then set Bloody Rose down on the desk next to the homework he was working on. Kain smiled discreetly at that.

"Say what you're gonna say and then get out," Kiryuu grumbled.

Kain hesitated. "You never answered my question."

Kiryuu tensed. "It's none of your business!"

Kain blinked. "It's none of my business whether or not you'll forgive me?"

Kiryuu looked confused, then scowled. "You fucking idiot, you're still wasting my time with that bullshit?"

"So you won't?"

The hunter gaped at him as though Kain were too stupid for words. "Did you not notice the part where _I _pushed _you _down?" he demanded.

Finally, they were talking about it. A giddy heat rose inside Kain at the memory. "Well, yes, but I could have stopped you…I just…didn't want you to go back _there_…" He paused, hanging his head. "And if I'm being honest, it was really good. I didn't want to stop." He dared to look at Kiryuu again, contritely.

The hunter's face was turned away, but his ears were pink. "There's nothing to forgive, you imbecile," Kiryuu said scathingly. "I would have tied you up with hunter charms if you hadn't given me what I wanted."

That idea was both terrifying and terribly exciting. Being at the mercy of a lust-crazed hunter…that was the stuff of cheap, bawdy romance novels. Kain pushed the thought away.

"Can you do charms when you're…like that?" he asked.

Kiryuu gave the noble another withering look. "Why do you think I haven't used them to restrain myself?"

"Oh." Kain felt stupid.

"Now feel free to get the fuck out before I throw you out," Kiryuu said, turning back to his homework. It appeared to be a literary essay.

Rather than complying, Kain wandered away from the window and sat on the bed a few feet from Kiryuu. The silver-haired boy glared at him but said nothing, though his hand twitched towards his gun.

"So," Kain said awkwardly, "how much warning you get when it's…you know…about to happen?"

Kiryuu strode to the window, threw it open, and then drew his gun on Kain again. "Out," he barked.

Kain swallowed. He only had one card to play, so he played, but he felt like the scum of the earth for doing it. "I'll tell Kaname-sama," he threatened.

Kiryuu's face went very blank and cold, and for a moment Kain experienced the crawling feeling of being assessed as the potential victim of a murder. Then Kiryuu slammed the window shut, took another look at Kain, and then punched the wall so hard that his fist went right through the sheet rock.

Kain rolled his lips inward, feeling very glad that it had been the wall and not his face.

"What do you _want_ from me, vampire?" Kiryuu shouted. "You want to fuck me? Fuck with me? What?"

Kain gazed at the distraught hunter, feeling horribly guilty for causing his distress. "I want to help you."

"Why?!"

Kain shrugged. It was the only answer he had. He wasn't the type to crawl out on precarious limbs like this, but here he was, dangling over a chasm, offering an olive branch to a mountain lion. He might have laughed at himself if he weren't so utterly serious about it all.

Kiryuu flung himself back into his desk chair and buried his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes. When he removed his hands, he simply looked tired, and lost.

"Whatever," he muttered, in a helpless tone.

Kain had learned by now that the word was Kiryuu's version of surrender. "When will it happen again?" he asked quietly.

Kiryuu shrugged. "Not tonight. It starts right after sunset, if it's going to."

"How long does it last?"

"Till sunrise. Unless it…unless I'm…"

"Satisfied?" Kain inquired delicately.

Kiryuu grumbled an affirmative.

"Then I'll come check on you tomorrow."

Kiryuu said nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

Notes: So, I was thinking for a while that people just didn't like this story very much, and my feelings were a little hurt I must admit, but then I finally noticed that the character tags had accidentally been stripped off, and so actually people just weren't finding it. What happened was that I tried to list it with Zero, Kain, and Kaname in a three-person relationship, and for some reason I guess the site didn't like that. (Really, FFN, be more open-minded! LOL.) It is still my intention that those three be listed with the brackets around them, but I don't know how to do it correctly. If someone could tell me how, that would be great. I'm very happy that more people are finding and enjoying this now. Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews; each one is like a little hit of some wonderful drug, and they really do motivate me to post more often.

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><p>"Where've you been?" Aidou asked peevishly as he dumped a stack of books on Kain's table in the library. They were all textbooks, on obscure topics ranging from bonding rituals to ancient charms. "And what the hell are you reading?"<p>

Kain shrugged and turned a page of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_. He had finished _The Secret Garden_ some time ago, and was now working his way steadily through the rest of Burnett's books. He had gotten more than a few weird looks from his fellow Night Class members, but he wasn't the type to let that stop him.

"You could give me a hand with this research, you know," Aidou observed grumpily.

Kain proffered one hand to Aidou, who knocked it away with an irritated growl.

"Have you found anything?" Kain asked, turning his attention to his petite cousin at last.

"No," Aidou answered with a scowl. "It must be because he's"—he paused, feeling for Kaname's presence, and then continued in a whisper—"because he's a hunter. I've looked at it from every other angle, and there's nothing. It must be some weird interaction with his hunter powers. But we haven't got very many books on them. They're pretty secretive."

Kain made a considering noise. "I bet Cross has some books…"

Aidou perked up. "Now that's a thought! We'd have to think up a believable excuse. What about…"

He nattered on for several minutes, proposing and discarding one ridiculous idea after another until he noticed that Kain was reading again and snatched the book away.

"'But only be good, dear, only be brave, only be kind and true always, and then you will never hurt any one, so long as you live, and you may help many, and the big world may be better because my little child was born,'" Aidou read aloud in a melodramatic and mocking tone. Then he made a face like he'd bitten into something rotten. "Ugh! What _is _this tripe?"

Kain grabbed the book, setting it out of his cousin's reach. "Just some research of my own."

"On what? How to make people vomit?" Then Aidou's eyes lit up with playful glee. "Ohhh, _I _get it, you're trying to learn how to be romantic so you can put the moves on you-know-who." He leered at Kain with a shit-eating grin.

Even though his cousin had missed the mark, he had still come close enough to make Kain blush. After all, it was true that he was reading the book in an admittedly hopeless attempt to fathom the heart of a certain silver-haired hunter.

"Well, I guess I can't blame you," Aidou continued, propping his chin on his hand and staring off into space with a smirk. "He is pretty sexy. Though nowhere near as yummy as, uh…" He glanced at the ceiling, which was their shorthand for Kaname.

Kain glowered. His fingernails got pointy every time he remembered that Aidou had been with Kiryuu that way.

"Uh-oh, somebody's jealous," Aidou teased. "I knew you wanted him all to yourself, you greedy bastard. You ought to share him with the whole dorm. We could have an orgy. Maybe we'd finally get that stick out of his ass."

"Cut it out," Kain complained, getting riled up even though he knew Aidou wasn't serious.

"Ooh, if we did have an orgy, do you think Kaname would come? Now _that_ would be hot…" Aidou bit his thumb and his eyes glazed over as some unspeakable fantasy passed before him.

"You're not funny," Kain muttered, trying to get back into his book.

"God, you really _are_ obsessed with him, aren't you?" Aidou scoffed. "Maybe I should just stop working on it. Then you could keep 'baby-sitting' him forever."

"No!" Kain cried. "I…it's not like that… I don't want him like _that_."

Aidou's face became more serious suddenly, showing a look of concern. "Then how do you want him?"

Kain sighed. "I…I don't know…I don't know anything anymore. I think I'm turning into you."

Aidou let the dig pass without comment, and that alone was worrisome. "Aka. Are you serious about him?"

Ruka approached, holding a notebook in her elegantly manicured hands. She gave them a smile. "Serious about who?" she asked innocently.

"Aka has a cru-ush!" Aidou sang merrily.

"Ooh!" Ruka exclaimed, eyes lighting up. "I knew he was having deep thoughts about something." She clasped Kain's hand and pressed it between her ample bosoms. "Ah, first love…so sweet…so fleeting…"

Kain snatched his hand away and scowled at both of them. "I'm not in love."

"Who is it?" Ruka asked eagerly of Aidou.

"Well, I've been sworn to secrecy, but…" Aidou glanced guiltily at his cousin. "Let's just say, he's tall and handsome and he packs a giant pistol in his pants. So to speak."

Kain pushed his chair back from the table and stomped out of the library. Leave it to family to weasel out and then mercilessly mock even his most sacred feelings. They watched him go with a cascade of giggles at his flaming red ears.

* * *

><p>For a week, there was no sign of the madness that had brought Kiryuu so low as to consort with E's, and then one day Kain hopped blithely over the windowsill, and found himself trapped by a circle of hunter magic. For a moment, as he was held paralyzed in its clutches, he felt instinctive fear and betrayal, but when he saw that Kiryuu was seated at his desk doing homework as usual, and that no other hunters were spirited about the room to attack him, he relaxed, and the magic released him.<p>

"Evening," Kain greeted Kiryuu cautiously. The hunter merely grunted.

Examining the floor, Kain saw that a ritual circle had been chalked on the floor and powered with blood. He didn't know hunter magic, so he couldn't decipher the glyphs and sigils, but he could guess their purpose, given that the sounds, scents, and auras from outside the room seemed to have vanished.

All at once it rushed in on Kain, what this meant. And although part of him was excited, another part of him felt miserably guilty. Kain's world had been shattered by his sister's rape, those many years ago, and he had only been able to rebuild it once more by promising himself that he would never let something like that happen to anyone ever again if he could stop it. That promise was built into the foundations of his very identity. It was why he followed Kaname, why he attended a school run by an ex-hunter, why he had attacked his best friend to defend someone who hated him. And why he now had to offer Kiryuu an alternative, no matter how much he wanted the hunter all to himself.

"Kiryuu…"

The hunter stopped scratching his pencil across paper, but did not look at Kain.

"I—I didn't mean to—that is, if you'd rather…I can…"

Halfway through Kain's fumbling offer, Kiryuu looked up at him flatly. There was a hazy light in his eyes that Kain hadn't seen since that night in town, but the hunter still seemed sane. Nevertheless, there was a hint of pheromones in the air.

"I can bring you someone else," Kain finished.

The silver-haired hunter bored into Kain for a moment with that hard violet gaze. "Fine. Then bring me an E."

Kain's eyes widened, and he knew that flames would have danced around him if it weren't for the magic dampening his powers.

"A strong one," Kiryuu added. "Recently fallen."

A long silence passed as the two vampires faced off. Inside, Kain boiled with outrage at the thought of letting the beautiful hunter copulate with such trash.

"I can't bring an E to a place filled with humans," Kain pointed out.

"Then we'll go somewhere else," Kiryuu answered, dismissing the objection.

Kain fumed.

"You said you wanted to help me," Kiryuu reminded him. "Did you really mean you just wanted to help yourself?"

Kain lowered his eyes, but his jaw remained stubbornly set.

"No. I want to help you. But, please…not like that," he entreated. "It doesn't have to be me, but… If you don't like Aidou, then…Takuma might be willing, or…I could ask one of the girls—Rima, maybe…"

"So you're not going to help me," Kiryuu said flatly.

Kain sighed deeply and covered his eyes with his hand. What Kiryuu demanded was so revolting, so _wrong_…but it was what the hunter wanted. It was Kiryuu's body, after all, and Kain had no right to tell him who to give it to.

At last, Kain swallowed his disgust. "Do you want a male or a female?" he asked wearily. "I don't think I can control more than one at a time…it'll be touch and go even anyway…"

Kiryuu stared at him expressionlessly for a long time, and Kain stomach fluttered with nervousness at being assessed so intently by the hunter.

"Don't bother," Kiryuu said at last. "You'll do fine."

Kain nodded dumbly. It had all been a test, he understood, one he had passed. His relief left him boneless and swaying on his feet. He knelt next to Kiryuu's chair, gazing up at him raptly, and cupped the hunter's cheek with one hand, turning his face toward him.

A tint of rose bloomed under the ivory skin, and Kiryuu pushed Kain's hand away with a mortified expression. "Not _now_, you idiot," he growled.

"Sorry," Kain mumbled, retreating, but not taking his eyes off those luscious pink lips.

Kiryuu made a noise of disgust, but his pheromones, which had spiked the moment Kain had touched him, told differently. For a quarter of an hour, the hunter continued working on his homework with the mental focus to rival a Buddha. Kain couldn't help but be impressed that the hunter could even write with so many pheromones saturating the air. It was all he could do to keep from pouncing.

It hadn't been so bad the other times, when he had perceived Kiryuu as in need of protection, but now, in a safe place and with sex all but guaranteed, Kain couldn't stop thinking about the hard, taut body hidden beneath the Day Class uniform, how delicious Kiryuu's lips and skin were, and the seductive little moans and whimpers the hunter made when his body was arched in ecstasy. Kain realized, with a mingled sense of alarm and lust, that he too was falling into a kind of madness.

At last Kiryuu pushed his books away and raked his hand through his silver hair. A light sheen of perspiration made his skin glow in the half-light of the incandescent lamp. Then he shivered, and rubbed his arms as though he were chilled, although the room seemed overly warm to Kain.

"Are you cold?" Kain asked in a low voice. He was lounging on the edge of the bed, where he lay on his stomach with his chin on his arms, watching Kiryuu like a hawk and tracing patterns on the wall behind him with his sock toes. He had discarded his shoes and jacket some time ago.

Kiryuu's amethyst gaze drifted lazily to Kain, flaring with heat as it roamed over the noble vampire's long body.

"'s always cold," Kiryuu mumbled. "Cold an' dark…"

Kain frowned. "Let me warm you up," he offered, and Kiryuu blinked at him dazedly as though Kain had spoken a foreign language.

* * *

><p>Kain stole from the bed and crept to Kiryuu's side with the sleek grace of the predator he was. He turned Kiryuu's chair, slowly so as not to startle him, and took one of the hunter's long, elegantly shaped feet in his hand, peeling the sock off. He rubbed the cool, clean, and delicate skin briskly, warming the limb, then pressed the sole against his cheek, nuzzling into it, and kissed it at the softest, most sensitive point, in the center of the arch. Kiryuu's breath hitched, and he stared, entranced, as Kain repeated his actions on the other foot.<p>

With his quarry captivated, Kain risked reaching up to touch Kiryuu's face again, and this time he was not rebuffed. He traced the sculpted lines of the hunter's brow and cheekbones, his strong yet refined jaw, and touched his thumb to the plump lower lip. Kiryuu's long, thick eyelashes fluttered, and the tip of his tongue laved Kain's thumb, making the heat in the noble vampire's loins tighten.

Kain slipped his hands into Kiryuu's silken hair, and the hunter's eyes fell shut as Kain kissed him, softly, chastely. The sweet and luscious lips parted at the insistence of Kain's tongue, and a quiet noise of longing issued from the hunter's throat as Kain tangled their tongues together, greedily plumbing the depths of the hot, moist cavern. The hunter's own hands clutched at Kain's shoulders, drawing him closer, until finally with a moan Kiryuu slipped into Kain's lap, and Kain brought his own arms around the lithe form, pressing him to his chest with fierce, possessive strength, one hand splayed in the small of the back, and the other tangled in his hair as they kissed wildly.

When Kain could resist no longer, he slid one hand under Kiryuu's shapely ass and lifted the hunter, who clung tightly to the noble, and tossed him onto the bed. Kiryuu blinked at Kain with lust-glazed eyes, and for a moment Kain was struck with a pang of regret that he couldn't have the real hunter, the one who wasn't maddened by some poison or spell. The thought passed quickly, however, as he fell on Kiryuu and ripped at his clothing, sending buttons flying to expose that creamy white chest with its hard slabs of muscle.

Kain bent and teased one rosy nipple with his tongue and the other with his fingers, and Kiryuu writhed beneath him, whimpering and struggling to expose Kain's body in turn. Strong, Kiryuu certainly was, but his coordination was lacking at the moment, and so Kain took pity on him and undid the buttons for him.

Kiryuu let out of a lustful growl at the sight of Kain's broad shoulders and rippling chest, and before Kain knew it, he was flat on his back with a smirking hunter pinning him down, kissing and nibbling a line from his chest down his stomach, along the fine trail of tawny hair that led all the way to his groin. All Kain's nerves seemed to quiver at the sensation, and he heard himself moaning. Kiryuu fumbled with the closure of Kain's pants, and Kain helped him. His manhood sprang free of its trappings at last.

Kiryuu wrapped his hand around Kain's shaft and laved the head with his hot, wet tongue, and Kain's spine arched as electricity crackled along his every nerve. He was leaking liberally, and the hunter lapped the fluid up like it was nectar. It was the most erotic thing Kain had ever seen.

Knowing he wouldn't last much longer, Kain hooked a leg behind one of Kiryuu's and tumbled them over again, then made short work disposing of the rest of their clothing. Kiryuu was only too eager to wrap his long, muscular legs around his partner. Kain yanked the nightstand drawer open and found a bottle of lube, thank goodness, along with a box of tissues that testified to the lonely way Kiryuu usually satisfied his desires. He poured the slippery fluid onto himself, and then pressed Kiryuu's knees back, searching for his entrance.

The hunter tossed his head back and forth, whimpering, as Kain pressed two fingers inside his tight, velvet-soft heat, searching for his sweet spot. When Kain found it, the hunter cried out, every muscle in his body quivering with pleasure and desire. Kiryuu's body opened up easily, welcoming Kain, and it was not long before he pressed the tip of his cock to Kiryuu's hole and slipped inside.

For long moments, all Kain could feel was the slick, tight heat of Kiryuu's body, and then he began to move, slowly at first, then more roughly as Kiryuu's cries urged him on. The hunter's nails dug into Kain's back, and his legs wrapped around him, pulling him closer as he rocked to meet the noble's thrusts. Their rhythm was wild and bestial, the pounding of flesh on flesh almost violent, but the more Kain gave him, the more excited Kiryuu grew. Their mouths locked together, Kain fucking the hunter's mouth with his tongue in an unconscious mirror of their coupling.

The hunter's hard, wet length slapped against Kain's stomach, and just before Kain released, he reached down and tugged it. Kiryuu came instantly, with a series of wild, elated cries, his body trembling uncontrollably, and the clenching of his walls around Kain tipped the noble over the edge as well. He saw white, and his hearing filled with static for how long he did not know. He muscles locked as he poured jets of his essence deep into Kiryuu's body.

Then he collapsed, panting, atop the hunter's chest, unable even to roll aside, as his entire body quivered with the aftermath of such massive pleasure, little aftershocks zinged along his nerves, and his mind drifted into a hazy, ignorant bliss. After a time, he was able to raise his hand to stroke Kiryuu's hair, and plant kisses on the hunter's beautiful, sweaty, rosy face.

Kiryuu's eyes fluttered open, revealing slivers of violet and a puzzled expression. Kain hated that expression, because it meant that he could no longer touch that body which drew Kain's hands to it by such mysterious and inexorable gravity. The eyes which gazed at Kain with trust and longing would grow cold and distant once more, and in them Kain would be an enemy once more.

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><p>There was a soft sound, as of pain, and Kain saw Kiryuu's eyes squeeze shut. He waited with indrawn breath, still stroking the hunter's cheek softly.<p>

"Get off," Kiryuu muttered, turning his head away and frowning.

Kain's heart sank. For a moment, he did not move. Kiryuu had tensed up, and Kain, still buried inside him, began to harden again from the delicious pressure. The bestial part of Kain, the part with the claws and the fangs, insisted that he take the hunter again and again until—

"Off!" Kiryuu ordered. His eyes blazed with anger, but there was a hint of fear hidden in them, too, and it was that which finally moved Kain and reddened him with shame.

He pulled out of Kiryuu slowly, drawing a tiny sound of protest from the hunter's throat, and leaving a trail of white fluid that leaked out onto the bedspread. Kiryuu pressed his thighs together, hiding it from Kain's view, but the hunter's stomach and chest were also sticky with Kiryuu's own leavings.

The noble hesitated, wondering how much he dared to try with the hunter restored to his senses, and then he scooped Kiryuu up into his arms.

"What are you doing?" Kiryuu protested, his words only slightly slurred. He pushed at Kain's chest and shoulders, trying to free himself, but the noble held him fast.

Kain said nothing as he deposited Kiryuu in the tub of the adjoining bathroom and unhooked the detachable shower head. He merely turned the water on and waited for it to get warm. If Kiryuu told him to leave, then he would, but it hadn't happened yet, and he clung to that.

"Stupid ass," Kiryuu slurred, glaring at Kain with sleepy, drooping eyes.

Kain smiled back tenderly, and Kiryuu turned his face away. The movement exposed that gorgeous throat, like an ivory tower. With vampiric acuity, Kain could see the artery pulsing under the skin, and his fangs had the temerity to descend at the sight, but he ignored them, willing his eyes to stay golden. It didn't matter, though, since Kiryuu refused to look at him. If the hunter sensed Kain's sudden hint of bloodlust, he said nothing, keeping his head turned resolutely to the wall as Kain rinsed his body clean.

After, though Kain knew he was still awake, barely, the hunter's eyes remained closed as the noble wrapped him in towels and patted him dry. Still, he did not send Kain away. Even when Kain tucked him into bed, took a shower of his own, and then lay down next to Kiryuu, staying on top of the covers so as to not accidentally grope him in the night, the hunter still did not send him away. Of course, by that time Kiryuu was dead asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Notes: Thanks for all the reviews, favs, and follows. I'm open to critiques, but if you guys are going to leave them then please do so from an actual account so I can reply with thanks, answers, follow-up questions, etc., since I think addressing individual readers from the AN section is tacky. Do note that there are going to be some AU elements to this story. I will be changing the ages (because my brain insists Yagari is at least 40) and relationships of some of the characters, as well as the way certain events took place in the past. So if you find anything that deviates from the canon, just consider it as AU.

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><p>Weeks passed, and every evening in the violet hour, when the sun's red glow was dying on the horizon, and the first stars pierced the falling veil of night, Kain followed a path of shadows to the hunter's bower.<p>

If it was not one of _those_ nights, then the window would be closed, but if it was open, then Kain was expected to enter and sit quietly without making a nuisance of himself until the hunter had use for him. Kiryuu acknowledged Kain's greetings and attempts at conversation with little more than uninterested grunts, if he acknowledged them at all. For some reason, being ignored so studiously made Kain crave to be looked at and spoken to.

When it was over, Kain would be allowed to clean the hunter up, dress him, and put him to bed. As time passed, it was those moments that Kain began to look forward to just as much as the sex, because it was only during those moments when he was allowed to touch the _real_ Kiryuu with kindness and affection.

After that, Kain could spend the night, as long as he stayed on top of the covers, did not touch Kiryuu, and did not jostle the bed. Since Kain was on a vampiric schedule, it wasn't sleeping that he did on the nights that he spent with Kiryuu after the hunter had fallen asleep. Instead, he would slide the curtains back and read a book by the light of the moon and stars. It was very peaceful and soothing to lie next to the hunter, listening to the steady rhythm of his breath and his heartbeat, and to glance over at him from time to time and admire the way the spectral radiance of the moon limned his face in silver. In the mornings, he would slip out as the sun was peering over the horizon so as not to be there when the hunter woke.

In this way, Kain came to understand the rhythms of Zero Kiryuu's life. It was a Spartan existence, consisting only of school, homework, training, and patrolling, interspersed with the occasional dinner at the chairman's house or shopping trip in town with Yuuki. The pureblooded female appeared to be Kiryuu's only friend, unless one counted Cross, but Kiryuu wasn't as close with Yuuki as he had once been. If the scraps of conversation Kain had overheard counted for anything, the hunter seemed determined to shut her out of his life.

As days passed, something within Kain began to shift. Although he had never enjoyed such mind-blowing sex as he did with Kiryuu, each encounter left him increasingly unsatisfied. It wasn't the mindless and bestial Kiryuu that Kain wanted. It was the stubborn and standoffish Kiryuu—the _real _Kiryuu. Day by day, he felt more and more frustrated at being allowed to revel in the hunter's glorious body and yet being denied the very core of what he truly desired. It was like starving with a full stomach.

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><p>Thus far, Kain had always managed to creep out of Kiryuu's room before the hunter woke. He supposed that Kiryuu knew that he often stayed far longer than necessary, but he dreaded making an issue of it for fear that the hunter would ban him in future. Therefore, it was not his intention to fall asleep on a certain night a few weeks after he had begun visiting Kiryuu's dorm, but it had happened before, and so it happened again.<p>

Kain woke with a jolt of adrenaline to a cold, hard voice accompanied by the intense aura of a powerful hunter. As a child, he had heard as many horror stories as anyone about hunters who came for disobedient little vampires in the middle of the night, and his eyes sprang open immediately at the terrifying prospect of being cornered by a murderous boogie-man.

"You ripped the buttons off my uniform shirt again," Zero Kiryuu accused him, throwing the balled up shirt at Kain's face. "I only _have_ three of those."

The hunter may have been deadly, but it took Kain's sleep-fogged brain a few seconds to realize that he wasn't in mortal peril of being executed for the crimes of button ripping and falling asleep on the hunter's bed.

"Er, I'll buy you another?" Kain offered at last, setting the article of clothing aside and stretching his long limbs like a sunbaked cat.

Kiryuu glared, knotting his tie deftly. "Accepting gifts from vampires is against Association rules. Fix it."

"Of—of course," Kain replied awkwardly, mind scrambling. How exactly did one fix a shirt again? Ah, yes, servants. No, wait—a servant might notice that it was a Day Class shirt. Terrible gossips, servants. "Umm…"

Kiryuu rolled his eyes, seeming to sense Kain's train of thought. He dug around in a drawer and produced a small plastic sewing kit.

"Here. Try not to sew your thumb to it or something stupid like that. Also, I don't remember inviting you to sleep here."

"I know," Kain agreed meekly. "I was tired. Sorry."

If he added it up, Kain was sure he would find that he had apologized as many times in the past few weeks as in his entire life previously. Sighing, he picked up the shirt Kiryuu had thrown at him and sat down at the desk, where three buttons lay next to the sewing kit. He opened the little box and examined the contents curiously. He'd never sewn anything before, but he understood the basic concept, so he took up a needle and thread confidently—and promptly stabbed himself in the finger.

"Damn it," Kain muttered, sucking his bleeding finger. It was only the tiniest dot of blood, and he put it in his mouth right away, but even so, when he looked up, Kiryuu's eyes were scarlet.

The hunter turned away swiftly as Kain eyed him with wary curiosity. Some months back, he had seen the hunter on the verge of falling to the End, but then Kiryuu had done the unthinkable, killing not only a pureblood but hisown maker,and in so doing clawed his way back to sanity. Thus Kiryuu was no longer in danger of losing his mind with bloodlust, but of course he still possessed the same perfectly normal thirst for blood as any other healthy vampire.

Kain's heart leapt with hope at the thought of something new he could do for the hunter. It was as common to share blood with a lover as it was to share food, and Kain had enjoyed doing so with all his previous lovers. When there were strong emotions on both sides, sharing blood could form a psychic bond of sorts, allowing thoughts, memories, and emotions to be exchanged from mind to mind, and even the transfer of power and abilities, if the emotions were strong enough. There was no danger of becoming permanently attached, since the bond would slowly wither and then die away like an uprooted plant if it was not renewed regularly.

* * *

><p>Zero stood rigidly with his back to the noble, trying to resist the siren song of the rich and tantalizing blood.<p>

The hunter had no doubt that he, of all ex-humans presently alive, and perhaps even of all ex-humans who had ever lived, had drunk from more purebloods than any other of his kind. First there had been Yuuki, whose blood even in her human form had been a potent and delicious nectar. Then Shizuka, who in the end had bequeathed her power to the twin boys whose lives she had destroyed. Her blood had tasted of endless longing and regret, a bitter brew for all its sweetness. Finally there had been Kaname Kuran, who had infused Zero with power in preparation for the battle against Rido. Zero couldn't even remember what that blood tasted like. Kuran had plucked the memory from his head.

And yet, despite all this, despite having drunk from the fountain of youth and power, Zero was still cursed with this petty and never-ending hunger, a hunger that lurked always in the shadowy corners of his mind, biding its time before lunging into the light once more. Kain's blood was enticing, but had nowhere near the allure of a pureblood's, and yet, even so, Zero's vampire side ravened for it. Zero had not practiced years of self-denial for nothing, however. He took grim satisfaction in hunting down every last spark of that desire inside himself and smothering it to death.

* * *

><p>Kain caught himself on the precipice of offering his blood to Kiryuu. His cheeks flushed and his head swam dizzily as he realized what he had been about to do. Gods, he was such a fool. What had become of the cool and collected aristocrat he had been only a little while ago? His feelings for Kiryuu were turning him as impulsively idiotic as Aidou. Offering Kiryuu his blood was tantamount to placing his heart at the hunter's feet. Kain's feelings might be evolving, but Kiryuu's clearly weren't. The silver-haired man would crush Kain's heart under his foot like a cockroach.<p>

"I have some blood tablets…" Kain offered instead. "In my jacket pocket. If you want them." He gestured at his jacket, which was hanging neatly on Kiryuu's closet door.

"Don't leave your shit all over my room," Kiryuu snapped. He was shrugging into his shoulder holster.

"It's normal to get hungry," Kain tried, still hoping in the back of his mind that maybe someday Kiryuu might be open to accepting his blood.

Kiryuu glared. He had a habit of dropping bombshells whenever Kain least expected them, and just then he had no way of preparing himself for the blast that his comment was about to set off.

"Just stop it already," Kiryuu said. "You don't have to keep pretending to give a shit about me. I'll let you fuck me anyway."

The words cut much deeper than Kiryuu would ever know. Kain froze like a wounded animal. Was this how it would always be? No matter what he did, no matter how much care he showed, would his actions always be perceived as a cruel trap and his feelings rebuffed with vicious loathing? He didn't know what to say. No one had ever taught him the words.

Then he looked up, and saw the misery on Kiryuu's face, and perceived with sudden clarity that in the hunter there lay a wound much deeper than the one he had just given—a wound which had never healed despite the passage of years, a wound that had been picked at by friends and torn open by enemies, a wound the hunter tried desperately to hide and forget.

Kain's feelings for the hunter had been growing for weeks, but it wasn't until that moment that they crystallized fully. Heady emotion rushed through Kain, knocking all his others thoughts and concerns aside like a rampaging torrent, and, as he realized with dazed astonishment that this must be what people called love, he resolved to himself with the same fierce determination that had changed the course of his life once before, that no matter what, he would do all he could to heal the wound in Zero Kiryuu's heart.

Kain bent his head over his sewing once more, so as to hide the pain on his face that Kiryuu still could not understand, and the fierce resolve that would only frighten him away.

"I'm not pretending," he whispered in a voice made husky with emotion. It was all he could manage to say.

* * *

><p>When Kain returned to the Moon Dorm at last, all he wanted to do was drop into bed like a stone and go back to sleep. It was hours past his bedtime, and he'd been obliged to perform servants' work. But as he shuffled down the hallway, Ruka swooped down on him from the door of her room.<p>

"Are you okay?" she asked. "I thought I smelled your blood earlier."

Even with charms, it was difficult to cover the scent of blood, and Kain had pricked himself quite a few more times before he finally got Kiryuu's shirt buttons reattached. Still, she probably would not have noticed the scent if it weren't for the fact that they had been each other's primary source of blood for many years.

They hadn't shared blood since coming to the academy, but even so, Kain could still detect the faint presence of his bond with Ruka, buried deep in his mind like an old root. It had been with him so long that it was now a part of him. Nothing passed between them along the connection—it was too tenuous for that—but when Kain reached for it, he could feel Ruka's strong, warm presence surrounding him like an embrace. It was good to be reminded that there was someone who cared if Kain was hurt, even if that person no longer held primacy in his heart.

"I'm fine," he reassured her around a giant yawn. "I just pricked myself." He showed her his thumb, where a few faint pink dots were all that remained of his injuries. Needless to say, Kain wouldn't be ripping any more of the hunter's clothing anytime soon.

"What did you do?" she laughed. "Get into a thumb-wrestling contest with a rose bush?"

"More or less," he agreed.

"Silly Akatsuki," she murmured, standing on tip-toe to wrap her arms around his neck.

Kain rubbed his large hand up and down her slender back.

"So why weren't you in class?" she asked.

Kain's eloquence deserted him, as his cheeks decided to flush traitorously. "Uhh…"

Drawing back, she grinned slyly. "Well? Who is it? That guy with the 'big pistol'?"

Kain cleared his throat. Thank goodness she didn't realize that Aidou had been giving her a hint with that remark. "He wants to keep it on the down-low for now. Sorry."

Ruka clucked her tongue. "I already know he's not in the Night Class. He's not a human, is he?"

Kain scratched his head, flustered. "No, no. He's just a little shy, that's all."

She rolled her eyes. "Lame."

"Ruka…" a female voice called petulantly from inside the room. Rima appeared in the shadows behind Ruka. Her golden hair was sticking up comically, and her eyes were drooping sleepily. "Come back to bed…"

Rima wrapped herself around Ruka from behind, making Ruka chuckle in amusement. "You're all right, then, Akatsuki?" she asked, a little seriously.

"Of course. Why shouldn't I be?" Kain asked with a smile.

Ruka shrugged. "Oh, I don't know…sometimes I see you staring off into space, and you look a little forlorn."

The smile slipped from Kain's face as he frowned thoughtfully. It was a lot harder, he knew, to stitch up a wound in a heart than it was to stitch up a shirt.

"Maybe so," he agreed. "But I'm okay. I'm where I want to be."

She made a considering sound, and as he looked at her Kain remembered that he wasn't a complete novice at helping to mend wounded hearts.

"Are you happy, Ruka?" he asked suddenly.

Her delicately arched eyebrows rose. Then she smiled at him with soft understanding and patted Rima's arms, which were wrapped around her waist. The golden-haired model smiled and nuzzled into Ruka's neck. "I am. You don't have to worry about me anymore, nii-chan."

* * *

><p>"Zero-rin!" the chairman trilled like some kind of brain-damaged parakeet. "They're here!"<p>

Zero frowned. He didn't need to be told. His sensei's aura was a bonfire to his senses, and Kaito's was not much smaller.

As always, there was a slight flutter of anxiety in his stomach at meeting the man in whose footsteps he had always followed so doggedly. Yagari had been a hard master to please even before Zero had been turned, but afterward he had been terrifying. Even now, when he trusted that the man wasn't going to execute him for the slightest misstep, Zero still had the tendency to duck whenever a one-eyed glare flew in his direction.

With Kaito, it was different. Sure, he had absorbed some of the same hardness and ruthlessness that Yagari was known for, but Zero had been there to see it happen. Kaito and Zero had trained together under Yagari. Zero wasn't intimidated by his peer, but even so—he never sensed more keenly how far his life had jumped the rails than when he was in the presence of the one whose life was still on the track Zero had meant to follow.

The silver-haired hunter removed the lid from the roasting pan, and a cloud of steam billowed out. He scooped the mushrooms out into a bowl, then arranged the brown-skinned pieces of chicken on a platter. Yuuki danced into the kitchen, looking radiant in a lacy skirt and high heels. She had become more graceful since reverting to her true nature. He could almost have called her a woman instead of a girl.

Her eyes still had a tendency to linger on him with the heartfelt concern of a sister, but she had finally stopped pestering him to know what was wrong in his life. He had only her relative inexperience with her newly regained powers to thank, he supposed, that she hadn't figured it out long ago.

"Need any help?" she asked with a bright smile.

Zero nodded at the covered dishes of potatoes and green beans. "You can carry those."

Together, they brought the food into the dining room, and Zero checked over the table once more, making sure that everyone had a glass of ice water, and the adults had wine glasses.

"Is it ready?" Cross called, peeking playfully around the corner from the living room.

Zero nodded, and Cross led his old friend and friend's pupil in. The two new hunters locked eyes on Yuuki instantly, assessing her threat level, before glancing over to Zero to do the same. That was new, Zero thought with a slight smirk. Before, everyone had always glared at him like he was about to eat the dainty female prefect. Now, she was probably a match for all of them, the four strongest hunters in the country.

Such thoughts were surely far from Yuuki's mind, however, as she greeted the others with a happy smile and seated herself next to Zero. Cross and Yagari took the two ends of the table, while Kaito sat on his own side.

"Oh, no!" Cross exclaimed. "Kaito-kun will be lonely! Zero-rin, go sit with him!"

Zero rolled his eyes exasperatedly.

"No!" Yuuki exclaimed. "Kaito-san can have Zero tomorrow. I want him tonight."

She wrapped her arms around one of Zero's and clung to him with her cheeks puffed out at her adoptive father.

"I'm fine," Kaito said with a pained look. "Really."

Zero extricated his arm from Yuuki's to serve himself as the dishes of food were passed around, and conversation proceeded as smoothly as it could in such mixed company.

"Mmm," Yuuki moaned as she bit through the crispy skin of the chicken into the moist and tender meant below. "This is delicious, Zero! You should become a chef."

"It is good," Kaito agreed, and even Yagari nodded.

"My son is a genius in the kitchen!" Cross declared.

"Well, somebody had to learn to do it, or we all would have starved a long time ago," Zero muttered.

Yagari, who had been the victim of Cross' cooking before, chuckled. Cross beamed, since Zero hadn't violently protested being referred to as his son, while Yuuki pouted at having her own domestic skills derided. Despite Zero's gruff reply, the compliments meant more than the others could know, and for just a moment, he felt the weight of the world drop from his shoulders.


	7. Chapter 7

"Up for a little sparring?" Kaito asked, after they had all retired from the table. His hazel eyes caught Zero's own violet ones. Kaito liked to hide his eyes behind a messy fringe of ash-brown hair, but the brazen challenge glinting there was not hidden at all. Zero hesitated, but he knew his old friend would torment him ceaselessly if he didn't accept.

"All right," Zero agreed, tentatively, after glancing at his sensei for approval.

Yagari trailed after them as the two younger hunters went outside the find a clear patch of ground behind Cross' house where they couldn't be seen from the Sun Dorm. It was dark out, with only a slender crescent of moon, but those were good conditions for hunters to practice in, given that vampires tended to hide in dark places.

Zero hadn't shared with the other hunters—or Cross, for that matter—exactly how much pure blood he had consumed over the years, except to say that he was no longer in danger of falling to level E. He had originally gained only a slight advantage in speed, strength, and senses when he was bitten by Shizuka, but the gap was much wider now. How wide, Zero wasn't sure exactly, except to be sure it was more than the Association would feel comfortable with.

Unaware of Zero's recent power-ups, Kaito probably thought he could beat the younger hunter as easily as he had in the past. Kaito had more experience and got more regular training, since he was employed full-time as a hunter whereas Zero was still an apprentice. Still, he was at least aware that Zero had an advantage in low lighting, which might mean Kaito was feeling cocky. Zero wondered if he should take the match seriously or just let his senpai win.

"Go," Yagari signaled them, and, without any further warning, it was on.

The two circled each other slowly at first, waiting for an opening, and then Kaito darted forward, aiming a blow at Zero's throat. Zero blocked, but too late he realized that it was a feint, and then Kaito's foot connected with the side of the head. Zero rolled with the blow and yanked Kaito off balance by the ankle, but Kaito recovered gracefully and came after Zero with aggression, raining blows down on him, all of which Zero blocked after that initial mistake.

Eventually, Zero got tired of being on the defensive, and with a flash of speed he dropped and used his leg like a whip, trying to sweep Kaito's legs out from under him. Kaito jumped, but Zero had been expecting that, and he snatched the hunter from midair, slamming him down to the ground and pinning him there. Kaito struggled, but Zero exerted just enough of his strength to keep the other pinned.

Zero glanced up at his sensei, expecting him to declare an end to the match, but all he saw was the cherry at the end of the man's cigarette flaring as he inhaled. Then Kaito spoke a word, and pain slammed into Zero, knocking him back a yard and sending him reeling. Kaito had used a hunter charm against vampires.

Shocked, Zero retreated before the other hunter's whirlwind of attacks. He was too dismayed to fight back, until Kaito hit him with another charm that disabled one of his arms, and for the first time real fear blossomed in Zero. Had Kaito snapped at being pinned by a vampire? Was he fighting Zero for real?

With a growl, Zero stopped holding back and let Kaito have a taste of the strength that could disintegrate E's in one hit. His first blow spun the other hunter around, and his second flattened him. Zero stood over his friend, biting his lip as the other man groaned on the ground and wondered if he was about to be disciplined for assault.

"I knew you were holding back," Kaito wheezed, getting to his feet at last. "Damn vamp."

Zero was off-balance enough to flinch visibly at the term. No matter how often he had heard it, or even uttered it himself, the sting never quite went out of the word. "I didn't want to hurt you," he muttered.

Kaito scoffed. "Like you could."

"Had enough, Kaito?" Yagari inquired with a touch of dark amusement.

"I'm just getting started," Kaito replied, flicking his sweaty fringe out of his eyes and falling into a fighting stance once more.

Yagari stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray. "If that's how you start, you'll finish in the hospital. Come on. We need a good night of sleep. You too, Zero."

Zero relaxed somewhat, reassured by his sensei's easy manner but still uneasy at having displayed so much of his vampiric strength. Kaito went grumbling into the house, and Zero made to follow him, but Yagari caught him by the sleeve and held him back.

"Gimme a minute of your time, kid," the tall, gruff man said.

Zero stopped, and turned with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension to face the older hunter.

"You okay?" Yagari asked.

"I'm fine," Zero replied quietly.

"Not hungry?"

Zero bit his lip and dropped his gaze to the ground. "No."

"You sure? I need to be able to rely on you on this mission. It's serious this time."

"I'm sure."

Yagari eyed him speculatively, but then nodded. "All right. Go get some rest. We'll head out early. Have your shit ready to go at five."

"Thanks, sensei," Zero murmured diffidently.

Yagari ruffled Zero's silver hair and gave him a crooked smile. Zero's heart seized with a sudden pang of emotion at the simple gesture, and he looked away.

* * *

><p>Kain was in class when he received the text message. <em>Tonight.<em> That was all it said, and all he needed. He had checked on the hunter earlier, but Kiryuu had dismissed him, so it was a surprise to hear from him now. Kain hoped nothing had gone wrong.

He sneaked out of class, ignoring the inquisitive looks, and headed for the Sun Dorm. As he neared the chairman's house, he sensed the aura of a strange hunter in addition to Cross' usual presence and Yagari's not uncommon one. Kain moved faster at that, worried at the possible implications.

In Kiryuu's room, the hunter magic welcomed him far more easily now than it had the first time. Kain didn't know if that was because he was used to it or because it was used to him. It had been a month since he had first entered one of Kiryuu's circles, and he had stepped through quite a few since then.

Although the nights he spent with the hunter were pure bliss, somehow they always left him with an empty aching inside. Kiryuu was more used to his presence, now; he no longer protested when Kain washed him, or begrudged him a spot atop his covers. Kain had worked his way into the hunter's life, yet he couldn't help thinking that his presence was like a sliver lodged under the hunter's skin, and he dreaded the day he would be plucked out. If only it were so easy to enter the hunter's heart—but, then, if Kiryuu were more generous with his affections, he would not be the person Kain had fallen for so desperately.

At the center of his chalk circle, Kiryuu paced back and forth, biting his thumbnail.

"Are you all right?" Kain asked, clasping the hunter's shoulders and inspecting him from head to foot. It was not like Zero to wear his anxiety so openly on his sleeve.

Kiryuu brushed his hands away with a curl of his lip. Kain wondered if the hunter knew how much that tiny gesture hurt. Nevertheless, he backed off, respecting the silver-haired man's space. He had learned that overt gestures of concern were never trusted or accepted. Like a feral cat, the hunter would accept kindness only on his own terms.

"I'm fine," Kiryuu replied dismissively. Of course, he would probably have said that even if he was bleeding to death.

Kain settled himself onto the bed. "You're not…you know…like that?" It was hard to talk about a problem that had no name. The phrase 'like that' was about the best they could seem to come up with.

Kiryuu's face twisted like he had tasted something bitter. "No."

Kain waited a moment, but the hunter simply kept pacing. So Kain stretched out on the bed, toeing his shoes off, and made himself comfortable to wait. It was no good trying to rush the hunter into anything.

"It's just…" Kiryuu began finally. "I have to go on a mission tomorrow. With—with Yagari, and Kaito."

"The hunter that's staying with Cross tonight?"

Kiryuu nodded. "I'll be gone for a few days," he continued.

Kain sat up slowly as he began to understand. Kiryuu's attacks came every three or four days.

"Maybe you shouldn't go," Kain advised cautiously.

Kiryuu snorted. "Like I didn't think of that? I _have_ to. This is my last mission as an apprentice. If I fail it, I'll never be a fully qualified hunter. I'd have to be supervised on every mission."

"Can't they reschedule it?"

Kiryuu looked at Kain like he was dumber than a potted plant. "The Association isn't really big on second chances, and they've never even _heard _of third chances. Every time they don't shoot me in the face, they feel like they're doing me a giant favor. If I ask for anything else…" He left the rest to Kain's imagination.

"And you want to devote your life to this organization?" Kain asked in amazement.

Kiryuu glared.

"So…you want to—kind of—get it out of your system early?" Kain suggested. "Will that work?"

"How the hell should I know," Kiryuu growled. He started gnawing on his nails again.

"Well, have you tried having sex when you weren't like that? Since this all started, I mean?"

Kiryuu gave him a slightly wild-eyed look. "I—I've never done it when I wasn't…like that."

Kain's amber eyes widened. "You mean _ever_?"

Instantly, he realized that his reaction had been a mistake. He should never have let Kiryuu detect his shock. The hunter's cheeks burned with embarrassment, and he turned his back on Kain, muscles rigid. But, Gods, what a wretched thought—for Kiryuu to have lost his virginity to a pack of filthy—ugh, Kain couldn't let himself think about it. He'd start punching walls like Kiryuu if he had to imagine that.

Kain wanted to say something reassuring, like that having sex under the influence didn't really count, but of course that would imply that he might be taking Kiryuu's real virginity. And since he didn't feel much like being defenestrated, Kain kept that thought to himself.

Unfortunately, not saying it didn't make the idea depart. Kain suddenly felt terribly nervous, almost as nervous as he had been before his own first time, which had been with Takuma, after his 14th birthday party—the real party for his close friends, not the showy one for his relatives—when Aidou had ruined the cake by shoving Takuma's face in it, and then Ruka had dropped a handful of it down Kain's pants, and suddenly the whole party had broken into a no-holds-barred food fight.

For some reason, Takuma had burst into tears, and Kain had ushered him away to get cleaned up. One thing had led to another and before he knew it, Takuma was licking frosting off very inappropriate parts of Kain's body. Ruka and Rima had broken into the room the second it was all over and collapsed in fits of giggles at the sight of Kain covered in the remains of the birthday cake. He had accidentally set fire to a pillow with mortification, and even now he couldn't comfortably eat cake with Takuma, Ruka, or Rima in the room. It made birthday celebrations a unique pleasure.

"Umm…" Kiryuu said. Kain looked up and realized that the hunter was eyeing him askance. "You okay?"

Kain shoved the memories away and nodded, with a soft smile at Kiryuu's unusual display of concern.

"I mean..." Kiryuu swallowed, fixing an uncertain violet gaze on the noble. "You can, um, you can do it, right?"

"What do you mean?"

Now Kiryuu was the one to redden, as his eyes darted around the room. His words came out in a halting, awkward string that spoke of his profound discomfort. "That's…I mean…I'm probably…might not be as good as…when I'm…like _that_…but…"

All at once Kain understood. He understood that despite his thorny exterior, Kiryuu was as insecure as anyone when it came to sharing his body. The hunter had no more real experience with how to navigate that exchange than Kain had at fourteen. In a very significant way, Kiryuu was still innocent, and to hear him apologize for his own potential lack of skill was like being offered that innocence on a platter.

Without thinking, Kain sprang to his feet and wrapped Kiryuu tightly in his arms, silencing his uncertainties by pressing the silver head into his shoulder and stroking the hunter's back. Kiryuu's body was rigid with tension at first, but after a few moments, he relaxed, and slid his arms around Kain in return.

"It's okay," Kain murmured. "I can do everything, if you want."

Kiryuu gave a short little inhale and exhale. "Okay," he answered very quietly.

Kiryuu's hands slid back around to Kain's shoulders, and he allowed himself to be kissed without either responding or protesting. Kain savored the other man's mouth. Just knowing that he was kissing the real hunter and not the insensibly maddened version was thrilling. In between raining kisses on him, Kain guided them to the bed, and when he had Kiryuu beneath him, he took his time peeling off the hunter's clothes at a leisurely pace, taking the opportunity to thoroughly taste and tease each new place that he revealed.

Kiryuu was much less vocal than usual, and his responses more muted. His pleasure told in smaller gestures—the curl of toes rather than the scratch of nails, a stifled gasp rather than a wanton cry. Kain found that restraint tantalizing. He was almost overwhelmed with excitement at finally being allowed to touch the real Kiryuu. It might well be the last time he ever got the privilege, and he fully intended to make the most of the opportunity to show Kiryuu how good it could feel.

When Kain took the hunter's manhood into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, he finally managed to coax a moan from Kiryuu's throat, and when he looked up, those amethyst eyes were fixed on him with an expression of mingled wonder and terror. Kain hummed around his prize, and Kiryuu's eyes squeezed shut with unutterable pleasure.

The noble vampire used every trick he had ever learned, and a few he had never tried before, to turn Zero Kiryuu into a quivering, thrashing mess of raw nerve endings. Kain drew it out as much as he could, milked the hunter for all he was worth with his mouth and hands, until finally Kiryuu came, his cry of pleasure muffled by his own fist, and the noble lapped up his seed as eagerly as blood.

Then Kain rested his head on the hunter's stomach, and stroked his angular hips, and waited to be thrown out of paradise once more.

* * *

><p>"Is that it?" Kiryuu asked, sitting up on his elbows and regarding Kain with a frown. His hard-packed abdominal muscles flexed under the noble's cheek. "Isn't there usually more?"<p>

"Did you want more?" Kain asked.

Kiryuu blushed. Kain smiled at him with lazy contentment.

"I just…want to do it properly…" Kiryuu explained with an attempt at grumpiness that did little to conceal his uncertainty.

"Are you sure?" Kain asked with concern. "I mean, I know you think the Association is already giving you a break, but honestly Kiryuu…they're lucky to have you, and they must know that."

The hunter snorted and replied darkly, "There are plenty of people at the Association who would love to see the Kiryuu line die out, and all the other true descendants with us."

Kain blinked. "True descendants?" he repeated, bemused.

Kiryuu frowned. "Forget that."

Kain let it go, but tucked the bit of hunter trivia away for later. "Well, I think Yagari at least would be far more understanding than you give him credit for. Can't he help you out?"

Kiryuu looked stricken for a moment at the mere idea of confessing to his master. "Sensei's already put everything on the line for me. I can't let him down."

Kain sighed. "Your family pride and your sensei's approval…" he mused. "Those don't seem like great reasons to keep suffering in silence."

At Kain's well-meaning but thoughtless statement, the hunter's wrath, which Kain had been foolish enough to momentarily forget in light of Kiryuu's recent vulnerability, went off like a landmine.

"What else do you think I have!" Kiryuu shouted. "Do I seem like someone with a lot to live for?"

Kain drew back somewhat and regarded the hunter with a mixture of sorrow and hope. He had to step carefully, because there were undoubtedly more bombs buried near that one. "I think you could have a lot more to live for, if you let yourself."

Kiryuu scoffed. "Like what? You?" He registered Kain's frozen dismay but kept right on going, cutting him down to the quick with his words. "Don't think I haven't noticed you getting all sappy over me. I'm not stupid, you know. You must be a real masochist to fall for someone who's only using you."

Kain sat very still, barely breathing. In that moment, even existing was painful. Sometimes he wondered why he even kept trying to get close to this person. Whether Kiryuu, whether anyone, was worth enduring such cruel and humiliating treatment.

Then he looked up, and for a split second saw the stricken guilt on Kiryuu's face before the hunter adopted his unfeeling mask once more, and at that the grip on Kain's heart loosened. He needed to see that, to be sure there was something inside the hunter's fortress of thorns, something worth guarding even if he could never reach it.

The hunter was glaring once more, but the way he had pulled his knees up to hide his nakedness said all Kain needed to know. The hurt didn't leave Kain; if anything, it only wound its way deeper into his heart. But it was a pain he could live with now. Kain smiled around the ache.

"A while ago, you accused me of only pretending to care about you," Kain reminded the hunter. "So which is it? Am I a liar or a masochist?"

"How should I know," Kiryuu muttered stubbornly, puzzled and disarmed by Kain's smile. "Maybe you're just stupid."

Kain leaned over and kissed the hunter's knee. Kiryuu's leg jerked, startled. Kain stroked his calves and planted kisses all around the two knobby peaks that Kiryuu had raised between their bodies, until at last Kiryuu's legs parted, and Kain kissed his way down into the valley of his thighs, driving the lines of anxiety and distrust from the hunter's face and replacing them with fluttering lashes and lips that trembled with sighs of pleasure.

"More?" Kain asked, drawing back.

Instead of answering, Kiryuu reached over and fumbled in his nightstand drawer for the lube. He did not give it to Kain, however, but instead squirted the slippery fluid onto his own fingers and then reached down to prepare himself. Kain watched, enthralled, as those long, pale fingers sank into the hunter's body and stretched the entrance until it was yawning for Kain. The sight was unbelievably lewd, and unspeakably erotic.

"Do it," the hunter ordered, spreading his legs.

The words and the gesture were utterly devoid of sentiment, but they nevertheless made Kain's mouth go spitless and his cock strain to obey. He buried himself to the hilt in one smooth movement.

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>: Was it as good for you as it was for me? Lemme know. Leave a review._


	8. Chapter 8

_AN__: Thanks for all the reviews, favs, and follows, and please consider my ideas about hunters and the Hunters Association as AU._

* * *

><p>Zero yawned as he hiked through the hilly forest between his sensei and his friend.<p>

"You all right, kid?" Yagari asked, eyeing him sideways. "You look a little tired."

Zero's cheeks flushed slightly. He had been up half the night and had done it with Kain three times before he was satisfied. Every time he thought it was enough, all he had to do was picture the look on Yagari's face at hearing that his ex-human apprentice was banging leeches almost every night just to satisfy some god-awful inhuman urge, and Zero had grabbed the noble for another round.

"You're the one who let Kaito beat the crap out of me last night," he reminded Yagari to put him off the scent.

Kaito made a loud noise of protest. "Excuse me? _I _beat _you _up? Then how come I'm the one who's black and blue?"

Zero snorted. "Oh, please, what are you, a suit, now? If you've still got bruises, let's see 'em."

"Don't use that word," Yagari snapped. He could glare even better with one eye than two, Zero had learned.

"Why not," Kaito protested. "It's just us."

"Because you'll get in the habit, and pretty soon you'll be dropping it at headquarters, and I don't need your reputations to get any worse."

Zero instantly felt ashamed of himself for doing something that could damage his sensei's reputation, but Kaito just blew it off.

The epithet Zero had used was one of a number of rude names that descendants of the original vampire hunters called members of the Association who did not have any hunter blood. The latter outnumbered the former ten to one nowadays, and those few true descendants who remained had become a bit defensive.

The descendants of the first hunters possessed vampiric traits: more strength and stamina, sharper senses, faster speed and healing, the ability to sense auras, and more effective magic. Those traits had originated when their ancestors had consumed the blood and flesh of purebloods, and they had survived for generations through charms performed on their children when they were still in the womb.

Zero, Kaito, Yagari, and Cross were all true descendants, of course. Cross' vampiric traits were so strong that he had stopped aging centuries ago. Yagari's aging had also slowed; he appeared to be in his early twenties, despite being in his late forties. Technically, Ichiru was also a descendant, but he had been born a normal human, due to Zero consuming his powers in the womb, and the magic that was intended to develop the unborn hunters' vampiric powers had ended up weakening Ichiru instead of strengthening him.

Naturally, those hunters who were just normal humans felt both jealous of and threatened by the descendants' abilities, whereas many descendants were contemptuous of their fully human allies. Yagari did his best to hide it, but Zero knew the man didn't consider anyone who wasn't a descendant to be a real hunter. It was why he had no interest in taking any higher role of authority at the Association. All the true descendants already regarded Yagari as their real leader.

The Association knew that, and sometimes there were rumblings about sedition, but there wasn't much they could do about him if they wanted to keep the descendants in the organization. The undescended hunters had the edge in numbers, money, and logistics, but it was the descendants who did most of the actual hunting. If Yagari's faction split, the Association's power would be gutted, and the political fallout would be a nightmare for everyone involved.

There were no official terms for either kind of hunter, but each side had certain less than flattering terms for the other. The names all had their origins in some kind of insult. The undescended hunters called the descended ones leechlings, suckers, or grinders. The descended hunters called the undescended ones bait, fodder, props, sheep, or suits.

"I had bruises last night," Kaito muttered petulantly.

"So did I," Zero answered.

"All right, quit your yapping, we're getting close," Yagari called in a low voice.

At the top of the next ridge, they peered out over a rock outcropping into a deep hollow between two slopes. The mountainsides were blanketed with trees whose leaves were just beginning to turn autumnal shades, and in the clear air below them, two birds of prey circled lazily on unseen drafts.

"This will be our base point," Yagari told them, and the two younger hunters nodded with serious expressions.

* * *

><p>For two days, they took turns watching the cabin in the hollow below them with high-powered binoculars. That was phase one of the mission—determine whether anyone was in physical contact with the targets.<p>

The hunters were careful to hide their camp with spell circles, and to keep signs of their presence to a minimum. Each day before sundown, Zero fearfully awaited another of his attacks, but for two days he was able to stave off the madness that roiled perpetually in the back of his mind. It seemed that his gambit with Kain had actually worked.

No one visited the cabin, and the targets never showed themselves, so, on the third day, Yagari called off the surveillance, and declared it time to execute phase two of the mission.

* * *

><p>When Zero and Kaito joined Yagari to receive their orders, the older hunter had a surprise for them.<p>

"Zero, this is your last mission as an apprentice. I want to hear your ideas for how we should go in," Yagari said around puffs of his cigarette.

Zero began to sweat as both other hunters stared at him. He hadn't even considered what his plan would be; it had never been his place to decide.

"We should do a scouting mission closer to the cabin first…" Zero began, looking out over the hollow again. "See what kind of alarms and traps they have set up. Then we should meet up back here and make another plan based on that info."

Yagari made a noncommittal sound. "Kaito, that sound okay to you?"

Kaito shrugged. "Whatever. I say we just kill 'em, but we can do it the prissy way if you want."

"They're not E's, Kaito," Yagari growled. "They're nobles. They aren't just going to scramble like rats in a trap."

"Nobles, my ass," Kaito grumbled. "Couple of B minuses most likely."

Zero couldn't hide a small smirk. He wondered what Kain's face would do if he called him a B minus next time. Then he kicked himself mentally for even thinking about the idiot.

* * *

><p>Everything went wrong right from the start. They were all using charms to suppress being detected by vampires, but they hadn't counted on the guard dogs, which were housed out of sight under the porch. The two Rottweilers started barking as soon as Zero got within a hundred yards of the cabin, and then, instead of hunkering down in their hideout like most vamps did, the targets ran outside, guns blazing, and nearly blew the hunters' heads off.<p>

Fortunately, it was a lot harder to fire a gun while moving than it looked in movies. The nobles would have done better to let the hunters get a bit closer. The first couple of shots went wide, and by that time Zero was crouching behind a boulder, Kaito was plastered behind the trunk of an enormous oak, and Yagari had just plain disappeared. The nobles' next mistake was not conserving their ammo. They fired away while the hunters stayed behind their cover, and pretty soon Zero heard their triggers clicking.

He raised his head above the boulder and began squeezing off shots judiciously, taking the time to actually aim. The nobles were forced to scramble for their own cover, and Kaito used the interlude to move closer to the cabin, darting from tree to tree so as to stay covered. The nobles reloaded quickly, and began firing through a gap in the door, but Zero was an excellent shot, and he was able to hit one of them in the wrist. He could hear the yell of pain, and it gave him grim satisfaction. He also took out the dogs, since it seemed that Kaito was intent on reaching the cabin soon.

Kaito continued moving closer, and soon he was skirting the cabin's porch. Zero kept firing to give his friend cover, despite his frustration that he couldn't move in closer himself. He didn't even have time to wonder where Yagari had gotten to. Hopefully, the man had already entered the cabin and was about to get the drop on the nobles, but Zero knew better than to count on it. The older hunter might well have fallen into a trap and been taken out of the fight.

Staying out of the nobles' sight, Kaito rounded the back side of the cabin. Zero couldn't see anyone through the gap in the door now, so he took a chance and followed Kaito's route down the slope, darting from one tree to another until he reached the cabin himself. There were sounds of fighting coming from inside now—shouts and hisses, breaking glass, and the thud of bodies being slammed into furniture.

The nobles' auras were flaring like crazy, so Zero didn't bother with more than a cursory scan through the window before he kicked in the front door and joined the fray. That was a mistake. A dog that had been chained up just inside the door leapt at him out of nowhere. Zero put a bullet between its eyes, but not before it had sunk its teeth into his thigh. Blood ran liberally down his leg and began pooling in his hard leather boot.

Kaito was holding off both nobles at once, and he wasn't doing too well; Yagari was still nowhere to be found. Kaito wielded his two favorite daggers, one in each hand, and every time one of the nobles darted at him, he slashed at them. The vampires each had a few slices in their hands, but no serious wounds, whereas Kaito was dragging his left leg like it had been shot or broken.

When Zero entered the room, Kaito's gaze flew to him, and in that split second the male noble was able to leap behind Kaito and sink his fangs into the hunter's neck. Kaito shouted, but before Zero could shoot, the female was lunging to block him. Zero pistol-whipped her across the face so hard that she fell down, and then he stomped on her neck with all his strength, driving the spikes of hunter metal that protruded from his treads into her flesh, and crushing her spine.

The male was still sucking Kaito's blood with the hunter's arms pinned to his sides. Kaito was thrashing and hitting the vamp with charms channeled through his own body, but the bloodsucker just kept clinging to him like the leech he was. Unfortunately, just as Zero finally got a clear shot at the noble, the vamp released Kaito and shoved him at Zero. If it had been anyone but his friend, Zero would have knocked the body aside and taken the shot, but instead he caught Kaito and steadied him, and that gave the noble just enough time to get away.

"Stay here and make sure the female's dead!" Zero shouted as he pounded through the cabin after the male.

Zero put on a burst of speed and caught the noble with a bullet in the neck just as the bastard was hopping the railing of the back porch. Blood and gore sprayed across the deck, and the vampire screeched, but he didn't stop running. Zero jumped over the railing and landed on the uneven and rocky ground below with catlike grace.

The chase wound downhill through dense forest, making it impossible for Zero to get a clear shot. Branches and leaves slapped him in the face as he pelted headlong through the underbrush, running at top speed, and it took all his concentration just to keep from tripping on all the rocks and roots.

The vamp's instincts had taken him downhill, and finally, inevitably, he reached the stream that ran along the gully where the two mountain slopes met. The noble tried to clear the whole width of it in one enormous leap, and right at the peak of his trajectory, just as Zero was lining up the kill shot, a crossbow bolt zipped out of nowhere and buried itself in the male's heart. A split second later, Zero's bullet connected and sprayed blood and chunks of brain all over the bank.

The noble's body kept moving, but when he hit the far side of the stream, his bulk rebounded limply off a boulder and landed facedown the shallow water. A few seconds later, it began to crumble, and by the time the gentle current had pushed it down to the next bend in the stream, it was nothing more than a cloud of silt in the water.

Zero panted, scanning the trees for the origin of the crossbow bolt. Finally he spotted his sensei, lounging on a branch high in an old oak and smoking a cigarette.

"Thanks," Zero called a little breathlessly.

"Lesson one, kid," Yagari called. "Vamps always run downhill."

Zero rolled his eyes. Yagari called every lesson 'lesson one'. Zero had once accused the man of being unable to count. Kaito had contended that Yagari just liked to sound like he was in an action movie. Still, Zero took the point. He should have thought to post someone downhill in case the nobles did a runner. It was a good thing Yagari hadn't followed Zero's lead like Kaito had.

* * *

><p>By the time Yagari and Zero jogged back up the slope to the cabin, the female noble was dust, and Kaito was sitting on the front porch next to the dogs' corpses, stitching up the bullet wound in his calf.<p>

Yagari just shook his head at the fang marks in Kaito's neck. Kaito managed to look ashamed of himself.

"How 'bout you?" Yagari asked Zero, eyeing the blood that had soaked Zero's jeans. "How bad is it?"

"I'm fine," Zero answered.

Yagari gave him a stern look. "I'm still your boss, kid. Now drop your pants."

Kaito snickered. Zero grumbled, but reluctantly lowered his jeans to show his wound to his sensei. The puncture wounds were already half-healed. Yagari stared for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet Zero's with a look that the silver-haired hunter couldn't quite identify.

"Hmph," was all his sensei said.

Kaito, too, was silent. Zero zipped back up and glared at his boots anxiously, wishing someone would say something.

"So…" Zero began finally. "Uh…should we start searching the place now, or…?"

Yagari slipped back into his usual role as leader like a hand into a well-worn glove. "Kaito, you start searching the house, but stay off that leg as much as you can. We'll camp out one more night in case anyone decides to drop by, so Zero, you set up the alert charms. I'll do a sweep of the property for any signs they had company before we got here."

Zero nodded gratefully, glad of a task to take his mind off the way they had looked at him when they remembered he was a vampire.

* * *

><p>As the day wore on and sunset approached, Zero grew more and more anxious. He never knew until the hour came whether or not he would be plagued by the vile curse on any given night, but it was about time for another attack. He began second-guessing every stray thought that floated through his mind. Was that the mountain breeze giving him a sudden chill, or was it the pathological cold that accompanied his fits of lust? Was he watching the way Kaito walked to check on his friend's wound, or because he admired the man's body?<p>

By the time the sun finally touched the horizon, the violet-eyed hunter was a mess of nerves, and even the normally apathetic Yagari couldn't pretend not to have noticed.

"All right, kid, what's eating you?" the one-eyed hunter asked gruffly, around the spoonfuls of beans he was wolfing down straight from the can he had heated over their campfire. "Out with it."

They had returned to their base point, at the top of the ridge overlooking the hollow, to make camp for the night. They were to spend the night waiting and watching the cabin to see if anyone came to visit the now deceased nobles, but there wasn't much actual watching involved now that they had alert spells set up on the property.

"I'm fine," Zero said distractedly, staring at the coals glowing in the fire pit.

Yagari and Kaito exchanged a skeptical look.

"He says he's fine," Yagari repeated to Kaito.

"Didn't he say he was fine when that E in Nagasaki punched a hole through his stomach?" Kaito remembered.

"You know, I think I remember that," Yagari answered dryly. "He was running around picking his guts up and going 'don't worry, I'm fine'."

Zero glared at them. It hadn't been as bad as they were making out. Then he stared morosely back into the flames. "Are you cold?" he asked after a moment.

"Yeah," Kaito said. "It's fucking freezing up here."

Zero sighed in relief. He'd been almost certain it was the curse.

"You're just cold 'cause you lost all that blood," Yagari told Kaito.

Zero's eyes widened.

"Then why's Zero cold?"

"How should I know?"

"Zero?"

"Kid?"

Zero found himself on his feet without noticing that he had moved.

"Bathroom," he said, and set off in the direction they had hiked in from originally. The conversation behind him drifted to his ears as he jogged downhill, but he couldn't focus on the words long enough to comprehend them. Like a rat in a trap, all he could think about was getting away, even if he had to gnaw his own leg off.

As soon as he had gone far enough to be out of earshot, Zero picked up the pace, pelting through the undergrowth as recklessly as he had when he was chasing the noble vampire earlier. Just as he reached the bottom of the next hollow and the stream there, however, something whistled past his ear and thunked into a tree. It was a black crossbow bolt.

Zero froze.

"Don't play games with me, kid," his sensei called from behind him in a stony voice. "I'll put the next one in your heart if you keep running."

Zero hung his head for a moment. He desperately wanted nothing more than to go to his sensei, fall to his knees, and beg for forgiveness. But then the image of doing something else on his knees to his sensei intruded, and Zero knew that if he stopped for even a moment, he would lose the strength to resist any longer.

He had just made it across the stream when the first bolt hit him—not in the heart, but in his left ankle, shattering the bones. Zero growled and continued struggling uphill, dragging his lamed leg behind him. Another bolt took him in his right calf, piercing the meat and cracking his tibia. Zero grasped at the roots of the bushes and saplings around him to drag himself through the dead leaves that carpeted the slope.

Then the sound of boots stomping up behind him came to Zero, someone muttered a charm, and he knew no more.


	9. Chapter 9

_AN: I'm a little amused that some people seemed excited about the possibility of Zero having sex with Yagari and others seemed really against it. Personally I think Yagari is obviously uber-sexy even if my brain does insist that he has to be at least 40. Actually, even Kaien (Cross) is hot when he takes his glasses off-especially when he's fighting, yum... I'm 30 now (sob) so maybe that's why Yagari appeals to me more than to some of you. Oh, god, why did I have to get old... Well, whatever, here's some smut._

* * *

><p>"What the hell did you do to him?" Kaito demanded as Yagari trudged back into camp with one unconscious, silver-haired vampire slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.<p>

Yagari set Zero down against the base of a tree and clipped a set of charmed handcuffs onto the vampire's wrists. They would hurt the kid like hell, but it was the only thing strong enough to restrain him. Then he looped a sturdy silver chain around the trunk and secured it to the cuffs. This particular vampire wouldn't be doing any more running, Yagari thought to himself with grim satisfaction.

"Why'd you shoot him?" Kaito asked, limping closer and examining the crossbow bolts in Zero's legs. The wounds had already closed and started healing, but the bolts remained embedded in the kid's flesh.

"I didn't want to—he made me," Yagari complained, turning away and lighting a much-needed cigarette. "Little bastard wouldn't stop running, and I figured he was going into bloodlust."

That hit of dizzy nicotine-fueled dopamine was the one pleasure that Yagari indulged in without restraint. Many years ago, Cross had nagged him into quitting, but Yagari hadn't even lasted a month. His temper without nicotine was far more dangerous to everyone's health than a little tar in the lungs.

"Sensei!" Kaito exclaimed. "He's waking up."

"What?" Yagari demanded, around the cigarette dangling from his lip.

A normal ex-human would have been out for hours yet, with the charm Yagari had used. But there were those silly purple eyes blinking at him mistily. Yagari sucked in a hot drag of smoke and frowned at his best behaved and yet most troublesome student. It was plain by the color of Zero's eyes that he wasn't experiencing bloodlust as Yagari had supposed, which left the older hunter feeling a bit guilty about injuring the kid.

"Nice stunt, asshole," Kaito said, crouching down in front of Zero with his elbows on his knees. "What'd you think you were doing?"

Zero grimaced, and squeezed his eyes shut. "Sensei…" he groaned. "Please…you gotta stay away from me…" The kid's words were slurred, like he'd been drinking.

"Talk to me, kid," Yagari ordered curtly. "What's going on?"

The silver-haired vampire shivered suddenly as though he were cold. "Stay 'way," he slurred. "T' sunrise. St' 'way fr' me." Then, after one last shiver, his body went limp, and he said no more.

* * *

><p>"Zero?" Yagari asked after the kid had been quiet for a minute. There was no response. "Kid?" he tried again.<p>

Slowly, Zero lifted his face from his knees. There was something different about his eyes. They hadn't changed color, but they were wide and glassy, and the expression was all wrong. Zero Kiryuu would never have gazed at Yagari with such naked desperation.

Yagari moved closer, carefully watching the vampire's reaction. Zero licked his lips and flushed a little as Yagari came close enough to touch him. The older hunter reached down and without warning yanked the first crossbow bolt out of Zero's leg. The vampire yelped and whined like a dog that had been kicked. That was all wrong, too. When Zero Kiryuu was in pain, he would grit his teeth and refuse to utter a sound even if it killed him. Clearly, Yagari's student was experiencing some kind of altered state.

Yagari removed the other crossbow bolt, watching the flesh begin to knit itself together. There was scarcely even any bleeding, and all the older hunter could do was shake his head. It was obvious Zero had been drinking more pure blood than he let on. Yagari just hoped that tangling with purebloods wasn't how the kid had gotten into whatever mess he was in.

It was not until Yagari actually touched the kid that he finally realized precisely what state his student was in. When the older hunter ran his rough, calloused fingers over Zero's ankle to check the position of the healing bones, a soft moan sounded, and Yagari's eyes flew to Zero's in shock. He found the kid gazing at him with parted lips, breathing shallowly, with a slight flush of color across his cheeks, and a tent in his pants big enough to house a three ring circus.

"I think I know what's wrong with him," Yagari said flatly, crossing the campsite to join Kaito on the other side of the fire.

Kaito nodded tensely. "It's not bloodlust, is it? It's just…lust."

Yagari acknowledged that with a grunt.

"Some kind of delayed-action drug, maybe…?" Kaito speculated.

Yagari frowned, lighting another cigarette with the still burning butt of his last one. "Maybe. Or maybe a spell."

They were quiet for a while, watching their comrade across the flames of the campfire and pondering what might have happened to him. The kid was whimpering and writhing around against the tree, trying to get to them or entice them to come to him, Yagari wasn't sure which. He could hardly bear to look at his student in that state.

Zero had taken a lot of shit about being a vampire from other hunters at the Association, and the higher-ups often treated him as though he were little more than a rabid attack dog. But Yagari's student had always been the most calm and collected of hunters—in public, at least. Yagari knew, or at least suspected, how much it cost the kid to maintain that equanimity in the face of the abuse and discrimination he suffered, and how hard he fought to demonstrate his humanity to his doubters. To see Zero robbed of every quality he so desperately struggled to retain, and reduced to this bestial state was—well, it made Yagari want to find whoever had done this and use his crossbow turn their face into a pin-cushion.

On the next rock over, Kaito was similarly brooding, but neither of them put their thoughts into words. In the trees around them, two nightjars called to each other in high, clear notes, while in the distance an owl hooted softly. The wind rustling the leaves was a steady susurration, like waves on a beach, and the popping and crackling of the logs in the fire made an irregular accompaniment. From time to time the wind shifted, blowing the smoke into their faces.

* * *

><p>A new sound broke their dark silence. It was Zero, whimpering again, but this time it was accompanied by the aroma of fresh blood. The kid's face was twisted in anguish, and blood ran down his arms and chest in rivulets from the gouges he had torn there with his own claws.<p>

"Fuck," Kaito spat.

Yagari was frozen half a second with shock—unforgivable for a hunter of his experience—and then he leapt across the clearing and hit Zero with the same sleeping charm that he had used earlier. Working quickly, forcing himself to focus on acting and not on thinking, he re-cuffed Zero's hands behind the kid's back so that he couldn't hurt himself, and tightened the chain around the tree for good measure.

Though Yagari's spell should have lasted for hours, it kept Zero out for only a couple of minutes, and just as the older hunter was finishing, he found the kid looking up at him again with glassy violet eyes, whimpering like a lost puppy. Even when he was kid, Zero had never looked at him like that. It did funny things to Yagari's calloused heart, and he found himself reaching out to ruffle that silver hair softly.

Zero leaned into his touch with a noise of simple, wondering pleasure, and Yagari had to force himself to move away before he too could fall under whatever spell had already claimed the kid. Zero made a plaintive cry as Yagari moved out of reach.

"Pathetic," Kaito muttered, but he sounded far more pitying than disgusted.

Yagari grimly lit another cigarette and dragged the hot, poisonous smoke into his lungs. He'd known, the moment he'd found that kid lying in a sticky pool of his mother's blood and decided not to just euthanize him on the spot, that there would be a lot of hard knocks waiting for Zero, but this was one he hadn't seen coming.

Zero continued making pleading noises, and when neither hunter stirred, began struggling in his chains again.

"Maybe we should call this off," Kaito suggested hesitantly. "Take him to Cross…"

Yagari had already thought of that, but he just couldn't bear to take away Zero's one chance at making full hunter status, even if it was only a bureaucratic designation. The kid had already had too many things taken from him in his short life.

"Do you wanna be the one to tell him he failed the mission?" Yagari asked Kaito flatly.

The hazel-eyed hunter sighed.

"He said it'd be over at sunrise," Yagari reminded him. "We just gotta wait it out. Then we can get some answers."

* * *

><p>They sat quietly, listening to the kid's whimpering, as the moon rose over the mountains. Yagari was just getting ready to suggest one of them try to get some sleep, when a new, more ominous sound came from Zero's side of the campsite. It was a dull crack.<p>

Kaito and Yagari glanced at each other, wondering if the other had heard it, when the sound came again, and suddenly Zero was on his feet, free of his chains. Yagari had to hand it to the kid—it was a ballsy move, dislocating his own thumbs to slip free of the cuffs. Kaito and Yagari sprang to their feet as well, but with the vampire loosed, they stayed warily on their own side of the fire.

That was a mistake, because the next thing Zero did was grab the silver chain that had bound him by the cuffs to the tree, and braced his legs against the tree to yank on it. To Yagari's amazement and horror, Zero was able to snap the chain, despite it being rated to hold a level B. With a rough cry of incoherent triumph, the silver-haired vampire hurled the chains and cuffs far away into the night. A silver glint flying through the moonlight, over the rock outcroppings, and down the mountain side was the last Yagari saw of the restraints.

"That little fucker!" Kaito cried.

"Give me your set of cuffs," Yagari ordered, holding his hand out for Kaito's handcuffs, but the other hunter only stared at him in horror.

"I put them on that female earlier, before you came back," Kaito said. "I—fuck, I left them there!"

"Shit," Yagari cursed.

"What do we do?" Kaito asked frantically.

Zero began to stumble around the campfire towards them, with a clumsy gait, like that of a sleep-walker, which belied his inhuman strength. When the vampire pounced, Yagari slapped him with the sleeping charm yet again, sending the kid sprawling on his face in the dirt. The older hunter hated to admit that he was out of ideas, but he was definitely running low.

* * *

><p>"It's not like he's gonna eat us," Yagari said, sitting on his squirming student's back.<p>

Kaito, sitting on Zero's legs, scowled. "Yeah, well I don't feel much like getting raped either," he shot back.

Yagari silently agreed. Beneath them, Zero woke once more—it had only been a minute this time—and began struggling and whimpering.

"Quiet, vampire," Kaito growled, nudging the kid in the ribs with his boot.

That did it. With abrupt and unexpected force, Zero reared up, flinging them both off, and tackled Kaito, knocking him on his back in the dirt next to the fire and pinning him there with both hands holding Kaito's wrists down and his knees on Kaito's legs.

Yagari was quick to use the sleeping charm again, but this time it didn't work at all—the kid's eyes merely fluttered for a second before he was wide awake again.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck," Kaito was chanting as he tried frantically to dislodge the crazed vampire atop him.

The ashy-haired hunter's teeth were bared in a rictus snarl, and Yagari could see he was panicking. He, on the other hand, was coolly assessing the situation. Ideas flicked through his head like pictures in a slideshow, each being calmly considered and then dismissed. And then there were no more ideas, and only one thing left to do. Yagari hoped his student would forgive him.

"Kaito," he barked. "Stop fighting."

"What?!" Kaito demanded, still struggling uselessly against his captor, who was now gazing at Yagari hungrily. "Fuck that—if you wanna throw yourself on a grenade, then go right ahead, but leave me out of it!"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Yagari growled.

* * *

><p>Kaito froze in surprise at his sensei's words, and finally noticed that Zero had lost interest in him and was now staring hungrily at Yagari. His sensei jammed a cigarette into his mouth with a little too much force, and lit it unsteadily. Then he unrolled one of the sleeping bags and spread it on the ground.<p>

"Sensei…" Kaito said, alarm flaring in his gut.

Yagari sat down on the sleeping bag and patted his leg, looking at Zero expectantly. With a happy noise, the violet-eyed vampire flung himself at Yagari, wrapping his arms around the man and kissing his neck and jaw frantically. Kaito gaped.

"No!" he protested, limping over hurriedly to join them. "Let me do it."

Even through the rain of wet kisses Zero was dropping all over him, Yagari managed to glare. "I'm your sensei. It's my job to do the dirty work."

"Sensei, how do you think Zero is going to feel when he comes back to himself?" Kaito asked quickly, with growing panic.

For a moment, the absurdity of the situation almost overwhelmed him. How on earth had they come to be arguing over which of them Zero would be allowed to molest? Kaito took a deep breath, calming himself.

"You're like a father to him. It'll really fuck him up," he insisted. "I'm just his senpai. Everybody sleeps with a senpai at some point."

Yagari thought for a moment. "All right," the older hunter agreed at last, reluctantly, and none too soon, for Zero's questing hands had reached the zipper of the man's pants.

Kaito wrestled his kouhai's naughty hands away. Zero didn't want to be pried away from his sensei, but Kaito managed to insinuate himself between the two, and coaxed Zero away gradually with a campaign of kisses and caresses. Not until Yagari was sneaking away did the vampire finally notice he had been diverted, and then he whined and pounced on Yagari again.

"Damn it, why do you want him?" Kaito complained as Zero escaped from him like a slippery eel. "Stupid vampire!"

Again Kaito coaxed Zero away from Yagari, but this time the older hunter did not try to move away. Instead he wrapped his arms around Zero's waist and let the vampire sit in his lap while Kaito kissed Zero. The silver-haired vampire's kisses were sloppy but enthusiastic, and he seemed to have sprouted some extra arms, because Kaito was being groped everywhere suddenly. Kaito tried his best to satisfy his kouhai with kisses and petting, but eventually the silver-haired vampire wanted more, and once again he showed his favoritism for Yagari, reaching behind himself to sneak his hands into Yagari's pants.

Kaito captured Zero's wrists gently and brought them back to the front. Zero made an irked noise, but then Kaito unzipped himself, and Zero's gaze fixated hungrily on Kaito's member. He licked his lips and reached for the limp piece of flesh. Kaito knelt up so Yagari could keep holding Zero while the vampire sucked Kaito. The ashy-haired hunter felt like such a pervert, feeding his cock to someone he'd always considered his little brother, but what the hell else could he do?

Although Kaito had only been reluctantly going through the motions up to that point, when Zero began working the hunter's cock with his hot, wet mouth, something in Kaito's mind rolled over and clicked into place. He got hard in a hurry, and that familiar, lustful fog that always clouded his mind in the heat of the moment began to roll out, obscuring the sharp corners of his conscience with an opaque haze of pleasure and craving.

Zero obviously knew his way around down there, and with Kaito's rising ardor, the greedy little noises the vampire was making stopped seeming pitiful and started seeming enticing. Kaito panted, and raked his fingers through Zero's hair, spurring the vampire on. It didn't even matter that his sensei was right there watching; in fact, the hotter Kaito got, the more he felt that he didn't mind Yagari at all. He'd often thought, back in his hot-blooded teenage days, when it was all he could do not to get hard for anything that moved, that his sensei was downright sexy, and that thought came rushing back to him now.

When Kaito opened his eyes to glance at Yagari, he found that the man's cheeks were flushed. Kaito's sensei narrowed that one, midnight blue eye at him, and the hazel-eyed hunter's stomach fluttered. For some reason, at that moment, the idea of his sensei scolding him was unspeakably exciting. Some tiny corner of his normal mind that hadn't yet been obscured by lust urged Kaito had to look away before he totally lost it and did something he might regret.

Kaito dropped his gaze, to the sight of his kouhai's soft, wet lips sliding up and down his stiff flesh. Those violet eyes were gazing up at him through thick lashes with a smoky heat that Kaito had never, even in his most lurid fantasies, imagined they could hold. He groaned. That did it. Kaito couldn't take any more. He pulled out of Zero's mouth, prompting a whimper from Zero at the loss of his prize, and grabbed the kid by the ankles, tugging him out of Yagari's lap.

The silver-haired vampire's protesting whines changed quickly to excited growls as Kaito ripped his kouhai's boots and pants off, and then to ecstatic cries, as Kaito buried and buried his head between Zero's legs, plunging his tongue into the vampire's tight hole and working him open.

When he surfaced at last, feeling somewhat proud of himself for giving his kouhai such a thorough preparation, Kaito was a little miffed to see that his efforts weren't being appreciated at all. Zero was lying with his head on Yagari's thigh and staring up at the man with all the desire that he should have been lavishing on Kaito.

There was just enough remaining of Kaito's normal, unsexualized self for him to realize that perhaps this sudden jealousy was not quite sane. Then he was overwhelmed by hungry passion once more, so he grabbed Zero's knees with desperate force and bent his kouhai practically in half. And without further thought to any regrets, present or future, he submerged himself in one rough thrust into the wet, tight heat.

Kaito groaned, and Zero, too, cried out in pleasure. The hunter set a steady pace, but he was so close to the edge already that he had to keep it slow. But then Zero's legs wrapped sinuously around him and squeezed, urging him to go faster, and Kaito didn't have the fortitude to resist. His entire body felt like it was burning up, being consumed with the need to race to the summit of the pinnacle before him.

Kaito slammed into Zero's body recklessly, fucking him as hard he'd ever fucked in his life, and in a dozen more thrusts it was over. He grabbed Zero's shoulder, locking their bodies together, and jerked him off clumsily as he pumped his seed into the tight hole. The silver-haired vampire came with an uninhibited wail of pleasure, his body arching and quaking with the force of it.

His muscles gone slack now that his frenzy of need was past, Kaito struggled to hold himself up and not simply collapse on top of his kouhai. He collapsed beside him, instead, uncaring of the dried leaves and dirt that would stick to his body. Then he watched, dazedly, how Zero's lashes fluttered as he rode out the last lingering aftershocks, and how Yagari smoothed the sweat-slicked silver hair back from his student's forehead—how Zero gazed up in blissful adoration at his sensei—how Yagari stroked Zero's face with a tenderness that Kaito had never imagined the hardened hunter to possess—and how neither of them so much as glanced at Kaito.

And then the parts of Kaito's brain that had previously been drowned out by lust told him to stop being such a whiny little shit, and, with that, he returned to his usual self.


	10. Chapter 10

_AN: I just want to clarify that my intention for the "pairing" of this story is not a permanent Zero-harem, but for Zero to eventually end up in a stable relationship with BOTH Kain and Kaname. (Maybe that counts as a very small harem?) It may take a while, though, and there is plenty of fun still to be had with others along the way._

* * *

><p>For a few minutes, it seemed like Zero was going to come back to himself, but then the kid's eyes drooped, and he passed into sleep. Yagari took the first watch, and Kaito nodded off right away. Yagari couldn't blame either of them. It'd been a long day, starting with a ten-mile hike at dawn, then the close call with their targets, and finally this nonsense with Zero.<p>

Yagari wrestled the kid's clothes back onto his limp body, tucked him into a sleeping bag, and then tended to the fire. At last, he propped himself up on the mossy roots of a tree and settled in for a long night.

* * *

><p>The shrill and eerie cry of a bird in the tree above Yagari pierced his sleep, filling him with a sense of dread. Opening his eyes, the hunter saw that dawn had not quite broken, and mist shrouded the mountain. He felt Kaito's aura nearby, wavering on the edge of sleep even though it was his watch. Zero's aura, however, was gone. Yagari bolted to his feet and jostled Kaito awake. They split up, searching in opposite directions along the mountain ridge for the kid.<p>

Knowing his student as he did, Yagari took the direction leading uphill, and after ten minutes of searching, he finally spotted the vampire, through a swirl of mist that glowed with the first golden rays of dawn. Zero was perched at the edge of a massive stone promontory with a dizzying drop-off into the hollow below. It was the perfect spot to watch the sunrise—or commit suicide.

Yagari approached with nearly silent footsteps. Zero was curled up with his arms wrapped around his knees. It was a pose the older hunter had found him in often, in the days and weeks after Shizuka's attack. He sat down, settling a hand on Zero's shoulder, and the kid tensed, but did not look at him.

Yagari was ashamed to admit that he wasn't quite ready to look his student in the eye, either. It wasn't because he had watched Zero having sex, or even because he had, in some small way, participated. No—it was the way Zero had looked at him. The longing and adoration in that violet gaze had been so raw, so—in a way—innocent, and Yagari hadn't been prepared for the intensity of his own response to that.

"I hope you didn't sneak off because you were planning to try some impromptu sky-diving," Yagari said cautiously.

Zero glanced at him, startled, then looked away again quickly. "No. I just wanted to…clear my head. I'm sorry about—what happened." His voice was a little rough, as though he had been crying.

Yagari patted the kid's shoulder. If it had been any other hunter who had failed to warn him about having a massive liability that could get his entire team killed, Yagari would have throttled the guy. But, knowing Zero, the kid would be far harder on himself than anyone else would.

"Shit happens. Don't beat yourself up about it," the older hunter answered gruffly, jamming a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it. "But I gotta ask. How long has this been going on?"

"A few months," Zero admitted reluctantly. "I don't even know what it is. It just _happens_, and I can't stop it…"

"And you didn't say anything because?"

Zero took a deep breath and released it gustily. "At first I didn't realize what was going on. It was just this weird kind of ache in the back of my mind. Then, even when I started having attacks, I could use inverted spell circles to restrain myself. But then…" He trailed off.

Yagari waited a moment before prompting him. "Then?"

Zero hid his face. "But then I escaped one night." There was a pause. "So I made the spells stronger. Only it didn't work after that…I just kept getting out, even when the backlash injured me. And by that time—the things I'd done—I felt so disgusting…"

Yagari wrapped his arm around his student's shoulders. "I'm sure you only did what you had to. It wasn't really you."

Zero groaned and ran his hands into his hair, making fists with it. "You say that, but I can't even tell what _is_ me anymore. It's not just those attacks like you saw. It's all the time. And it just builds and builds until I lose my mind."

Yagari blinked. "Even right now…?"

Zero nodded miserably. "I can fight it back during the day because the vampire part of me is weaker then, but it never really goes away."

Yagari frowned, inhaling his nicotine vigorously. "Spell circles were a good idea, but you need someone else to make them for you, so you can't escape."

Zero shook his head. "It's no good. Even if I don't escape, I'm so exhausted in the morning that I can hardly move all day, and then it just starts up again at nightfall."

Yagari grimaced. "We'll figure out what this is," the older hunter assured Zero, "and in the meantime…maybe Kaito would be willing to—"

"No!" Zero looked startled by his own vehemence. He dropped his gaze to his feet. "I—I mean—last night was bad enough…please don't make me do that again."

Yagari blinked. "Would you rather _I_ had…?"

"_No!_ I—I just mean—it's too…" Zero huffed, obviously frustrated at his own difficulty in formulating words. "I don't want you to see me…like that. Either of you."

"Then what do you propose?" he asked bluntly.

Zero blushed again and, in the direction of his feet, mumbled, "I already have it covered."

"You mean you have some kind of…arrangement?" Yagari inquired, in a fumbling attempt at delicacy.

Zero sighed and cast a long, melancholy look out at the dawn which had fully broken at last. The mist that had shrouded the promontory had burned away, but the hollow below them was still swathed in fog and shadows.

"Something like that."

"With a vamp," Yagari concluded. It would have to be.

The kid shifted uneasily and nodded once.

A sudden vision of tracking down whichever bloodsucking leech it was, tying him to a chair, and interrogating him, with a drill and pliers if necessary, passed before Yagari's eyes. He shook it off.

"I see," was all he said. After a moment, sensing his student's shame, he added, "Look, don't worry about it, kid. You wouldn't be the first hunter to, uh, fraternize with the enemy, so to speak. You don't even wanna know what that pervert Cross used to get up to with those Kurans—the older ones, I mean."

Zero looked so aghast that Yagari had to chuckle. The moment of levity passed quickly, however.

"We'll figure this out," Yagari repeated firmly. "Okay?"

Zero nodded, but Yagari couldn't help thinking it was an empty gesture.

* * *

><p>Kain leaned with his arms folded against the stone parapet, six stories above the ground atop the highest tower of Cross Academy. Even in the moonlight, the view was spectacular, showing the entirety of the grounds, the lake, the forest, and, in the distance, the town. The only downside was a cold wind that whipped past briskly at all hours, but even that could be an advantage, if one wanted to have a private conversation without going to the trouble of using a spell. Just at the moment, however, Kain was more interested in watching than in talking.<p>

It was well after dark, and the noble vampire should have been in class, but it was impossible to concentrate, knowing that his lover was out there somewhere, maybe fighting for his life, maybe injured, maybe out of his mind, and surrounded by hunters whose purpose in life was to exterminate out-of-control vampires.

It wasn't like Kain, to be unable to quiet himself and focus on the present. With Kiryuu on his mind, Kain had no room to worry about his own changing nature. At times, however, he was overtaken by the fear that the entire structure of his life was being rebuilt, one brick at a time, each individual change so small that he didn't notice it, but all of them together accumulating to render the entirety unrecognizable.

"Ah, I love the view up here," Ruka said, coming to stand next to him at the parapet. "Especially in Autumn. I wonder who designed this place?"

"I think it belonged to the Kurans originally," Kain replied absently.

Below them, a black sedan appeared on the road leading to the main gate, and slowed to a stop. Three figures stepped out and entered the grounds, while one of the Academy staff took the car to park for them.

Ruka gave an irritated huff and flipped her long, ashy-brown hair. "You know, I can deal with having a hunter as headmaster, for Kaname-sama's sake, but I do wish they wouldn't hang around this place like it was their headquarters."

Kain made a non-committal sound. His gaze was locked on the silver-haired figure below, who was walking a little stiffly, he thought. He should have agreed with her, in theory at least, but in truth he would welcome as many hunters as Cross wanted if it meant Kiryuu never had to leave.

"He's a cold one," Ruka remarked, pressing herself against Kain's side and wrapping her arms around one of his.

"Hm?"

"Kiryuu. He gives me the creeps even more than that awful sensei."

As if he had heard his name, the person in question looked up in their direction, and Kain imagined that their gazes met, even though it was impossible over that distance. He wondered what his sister would say if she ever knew just how hot Kiryuu could be.

"Let's go to class," Kain said suddenly, eager for the opportunity to sneak off on his own again. If only the window could be open tonight…

* * *

><p>"Um, so…" Kaito began awkwardly to Zero. "About last night…"<p>

The two hunters had been studiously avoiding the pertinent subject all day, during the hours spent hiking out of the mountains and then driving back to Cross Academy. The hike had been particularly grueling for Zero; his broken bones had not completely fused back together, and they ached fiercely with each step. Naturally, he kept that to himself. It had long since become instinctual to hide any weakness, even with those he most trusted.

It was night now, and the silver-haired hunter still hadn't gotten the chance to wash. He was grimy and dirty from days spent in the woods, not to mention his exploits with Kaito, and it felt disgusting, but it was the last thing he would complain about. Zero had been careful to use scent-masking charms all day, but Kaito, whose nose was not as sensitive, and who spent less time around packs of inquisitive vampires, had apparently not thought to do so. Zero had been forced to spend the entire day awash in the lingering aroma of their encounter.

That persistent scent, the physical exertion of the trip, the stress of explaining his stupidity to Yagari, the throbbing pain from his bones, and the ever-present hunger inflicted by his curse (or whatever it was)—all of these had left Zero numb and exhausted. He wanted to take a long, hot shower, and then crawl into some sort of cocoon where he could hide for a few days.

Kaito apparently had other ideas. "I just wanted to say…" the ash-haired hunter said, trailing after Zero, who was single-mindedly trudging up the stairs to his floor. "That is—you've always been like a brother to me, and…"

Zero's mind zoned out as Kaito kept talking. He couldn't concentrate on whatever nonsense the other hunter was spouting. He had a vague notion that Kaito was probably apologizing for violating the norms of their relationship, but as he turned his key in the lock of his room at last, he finally realized that the hazel-eyed man was saying something quite different.

Zero blinked at his old friend. His head felt like it was filled with cotton. "…Huh?" he asked.

Kaito shuffled his feet. "I said, if you ever need me again, um…just give me a call… I'll try to be around more."

Zero turned his face away, cheeks burning, and hurriedly entered his room, hoping Kaito would leave him there.

No such luck.

"Why do you have a spell circle in here?" the ashy-haired hunter asked in a puzzled tone.

The spell circle that Zero used to restrain Kain's powers and ensure their encounters were private had become a semi-permanent feature of his room. As long as he fed it a drop of blood every day, the inscription maintained itself.

"Why not? This place is crawling with vampires," Zero answered, dropping his backpack onto his dresser with a heavy clunk.

"But I think this is a privacy ward, isn't it?" Kaito asked, frowning at the chalked lines and sigils. Some of the elements were hidden under furniture and behind picture frames, so he couldn't make out the entire pattern, for which Zero was grateful.

Is there something you need?" the silver-haired hunter asked brusquely, irked by Kaito's unwarranted scrutiny of his private quarters.

The other hunter stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked away. He was still standing in the doorway, hesitant to intrude too far. Zero found that a bit ironic, considering Kaito had already intruded just about as far as was possible into Zero's personal life, not to mention his body.

"I was just wondering…but I know you don't want to talk about it…"

Zero groaned, and sank into his desk chair, glad to get off his feet at last. "Ask what you want," he said, resigning himself to it despite his wishes.

Kaito came inside and shut the door, for privacy's sake, Zero supposed. There was an awkward silence before the other man spoke, however, and Zero got the impression that Kaito was almost as uncomfortable with the subject as he was. He steeled himself for another interrogation along the lines of Yagari's, but when the question finally came, he was unprepared for it.

"How come you kept going for Sensei instead of me?"

Zero had been staring at his hands steadfastly, but at this his gaze shot straight to Kaito. He found an expression there that he had never seen before. It could only be described as…pouting. Zero stared in disbelief. Then he laughed. It was only a small chuckle, but Kaito's pout grew more distinct, and he began to blush, too. That was another rare and chuckle-worthy expression. The tiny injection of humor after such a wretched night and day was a soothing balm to Zero's soul, and he felt some of the tension begin to drain from him at last.

"What, did I hurt your pride or something?" he asked with amusement.

Kaito crossed his arms and pouted at the wall instead of at Zero. "Maybe."

"You idiot," Zero said, with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. Then his mirth faded, as he realized he still had to answer the question. "I just—he's stronger, so…" He paused awkwardly. "I mean, I couldn't even remember who you were at that point…he just seemed stronger…"

"Oh." Kaito's expression was sober once more. "Do you always do that?"

Zero fidgeted, not wanting to say anything that would reveal who else he might have been with. "Pretty much."

Kaito made a face. "So…Kuran?"

"_No!_" Zero shouted, bolting to his feet in consternation. A twinge of pain radiated from his ankle, and he sank down once more. "God, no. I'd rather…anyone but…just _no_."

Kaito looked startled. "Oh. Okay, then. Umm…" He scratched his head, glancing around the room uncomfortably. Then his eyes fell on the spell circle again, and this time he seemed to realize its true purpose, because his cheeks turned slightly pink again. "So—um—I guess I'll get going, then…"

Zero breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. Kaito went to the door and stepped out, while Zero followed to turn the lock. Just before he closed the door, however, Kaito spoke again.

"Oh! I almost forgot," the ashy-haired hunter called, grinning. "Congratulations."

"Huh?" Zero asked blankly.

"You completed the mission."

"Oh," Zero said, realizing for the first time that he was no longer an apprentice, but a full-fledged hunter, with all of the privileges and responsibilities that entailed. "That's right."

"Dumbass," Kaito said, still grinning.

"Fuck off," Zero muttered, but it was with a small smile of his own that he closed the door.

* * *

><p>"You know, don't you?" Yagari asked, flinging himself down on Kaien's overstuffed couch.<p>

"Know what?" the bubbly hunter asked, tilting his head and beaming.

Yagari favored him with a flat look. "I just spent three days in the woods with Kaito and Zero."

Kaien's bright façade sagged a little. "Did something happen?"

"You know perfectly well what happened! Why didn't you warn me?"

All trace of Kaien's smile drained away then, leaving an expression whose solemnity was more appropriate to a man old enough to be Yagari's grandfather several times over.

"You didn't…?" Kaien asked, trailing off to avoid filling in a blank they both would rather not say out loud.

"No. Kaito."

"Thank goodness for that," Kaien remarked with a wan smile.

That sort of bittersweet expression was one that his adopted children rarely got to see. For them, Kaien had boundless reserves of gaiety. Yagari still wasn't sure if Kaien's harebrained and hyper mode was a role he played for his children's benefit, or if the man really was that ridiculous, but he was certainly more serious in the company of adults.

"I haven't yet sunk so low as to sleep with my own student," Yagari grumbled. "Though I very well might have if Kaito hadn't been there."

"I'm sorry, Touga. I have no excuse. I suppose I was hoping he'd dodge the bullet. And, then, I didn't really know what to say. It's hard to understand unless you see it for yourself."

Yagari waved the apology off. "So. Who's this vampire he has the arrangement with? And can I borrow your interrogation room?"

Kaien glared from behind the wire-rim glasses that he wore only to make himself appear older. "Akatsuki Kain. And no. Though I'm sure that won't stop you."

Yagari remembered the tall, tawny-haired noble only vaguely. He had never had any run-ins with Kain that he could recall, so the vampire hadn't made much of an impression. He seemed to remember that the noble mostly just stood around looking bored a lot, often in the company of one of the females, and sometimes tried to get the little blonde male spitfire to settle down. On the other hand, Kain had nearly always entered the classroom only a step or two behind Kuran, and that would make him one of the pureblood's most trusted lieutenants.

"One of Kuran's attack dogs," Yagari summed up his thoughts in a dark tone.

Kaien huffed. "And people say Zero is yours."

Yagari gave his old friend an assessing look. "So it's like that, huh?"

"I'm not going to let you loose on him, if that's what you mean," Kaien said. "Kain-kun is my student, not to mention a noble of quite high standing."

"Well, your student is taking advantage of my student, so what's the jurisdiction for that?"

Kaien reached over to pick up his wine glass and took a small sip. Yagari used the moment to light a cigarette, glaring defiance at the other hunter's disapproving moue. He'd be damned if he was going to discuss this madness without nicotine.

"Your student can't function without such an arrangement," Kaien said at last, seeming to weigh his words. "I don't claim to know exactly what there is between them, but believe me, Yagari, Zero is far better off with Kain's help than without it."

Kaien gave the other hunter such an ominous look with those words that even Yagari's hot blood was cooled somewhat.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked suspiciously.

Kaien sighed and shook his head. "Nothing. Just that there really is no one better for the job—at least amongst those Zero would accept."

Yagari fumed, but said nothing. Privately, he supposed that he could live with it, as long it wasn't Kuran. He would never forgive the pureblood for using Zero like a pawn in his games of power. But it was hard for him to accept that Zero would prefer be seen in that state by a vampire rather than a hunter.

"So what is it? Some kind of curse?"

Kaien nodded. "That's my guess, as well. But one I've never seen or heard of before."

"Then how do we break it?"

Kaien took another sip of wine and turned his face away, looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace.

"A curse of that longevity and power must almost certainly have been laid by a pureblood. I've spoken to both Yuuki and Kaname—discreetly, of course. Yuuki is completely unaware of what is going on. Kaname knows, naturally, but has no better idea than myself of the cause. So I must assume that the curse was laid by either Shizuka or Ridou."

Yagari sat forward suddenly. "But they're both dead."

Kaien nodded, still not looking at the other hunter.

"Then…" Yagari couldn't bring himself to say it.

Kaien looked at him finally, and his expression was sorrowful. "Yes. If, as I suspect, the curse was laid with the dying wishes of either Shizuka or Ridou, then it is likely unbreakable."

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>: One last note - I cherish every review, and they definitely spur me to write more, so please drop a word or two in the box. even if it's just 'thanks' or 'more please'._


	11. Chapter 11

In the darkness of his room, Zero lay awake, staring at the moonlight that streamed in around the edges of his curtains and trying to quiet his restless mind. He should have dropped off the moment his head hit the pillow, given how exhausted he was. Instead of granting him relief, however, his brain had decided to torture him with an endless loop of memories from the previous night.

First, there was his own behavior, for which he could not forgive himself. Making a run for it had been so stupid. Then there were the things he had done when he was _like that_—whimpering liked a starved dog, crawling in the dirt, moaning in his sensei's lap. A hazy sort of fog overlaid the visual and audio portions of his memories, but the scents, tastes, and touches were in ultra-high definition. Worst of all, Zero was aware that something inside him, something he fervently hoped was only the curse, craved for more.

In vain, Zero searched his mind for something, anythingelse to supplant the torturous memories. Then he felt it—just the faintest tinge of light on a plane of shadow—Kain's aura. The vampire was at the edge of the woods opposite Zero's window, where he always waited to see if he was invited in. Zero had sensed the noble twice already that night, and had ignored him. Now, however, before he could think better of it, Zero went to the window and raised it.

For a few moments, there was no response, and then, unexpectedly, the noble's aura moved away, in the direction of the Moon Dorm, until it disappeared from Zero's senses entirely. For a moment, Zero felt only surprise, and then a surge of anger overtook him. What did the vampire mean by sniffing around all night like a dog in heat and then turning his nose up when Zero finally threw him a bone?

* * *

><p>Kain had promised himself that he would only check once to see if Kiryuu's window was, by some miracle, open, and yet here he was for the third time, loitering in a pool of shadow beneath the great oaks that surrounded the Sun Dorm. He had come by earlier during his usual patrol of the grounds with Aidou, and then again later, and now…again. Aidou had called him an idiot when he saw where his cousin's eyes were trained the first time—what would he call Kain now?<p>

"Freeze, asshole," a low, gruff voice spoke next to his ear. At the same instant, the razor-sharp edge of a hunter blade touched his throat with an icy-hot sensation, and Kain felt a drop of blood ooze from his skin.

Kain froze. "Yagari…san?" he ventured, recognizing the man's smell.

A hand seized him by the shoulder and turned him around roughly, then shoved him in the direction of the Moon Dorm.

"March," Yagari ordered.

Not wanting to escalate the encounter into full-blown violence, Kain decided to comply. The noble no longer suspected that Kiryuu might shoot him for any slight offense, but the hunter's sensei was a different matter. The man had been known to fling throwing knives at the heads of students who back-talked to him or fell asleep in his class.

Of course, attacking a vampire of Kain's stature without provocation would touch off a firestorm of repercussions, and that should have reassured the noble of his safety, but it didn't. Kain took no particular interest, and certainly no pleasure, in the politics of vampires or hunters, but it was a matter of personal safety for someone in his position to be cognizant of current affairs, so he knew enough to be aware that any hunter who regularly spent time in the company of Kaien Cross didn't give a damn about his reputation with the Association. Not only that, but Yagari, Kain suspected, navigated life with no one else's moral compass but his own, and its heading might well be more than a few degrees off-center.

So Kain marched. Yagari ghosted along in his wake, still suppressing his aura so that the vampire had to rely on his ears to pick up the faint sounds of his footfalls. They walked in silence for a few minutes, until they reached the short stone bridge over the inlet to the lake.

"Halt," Yagari commanded.

Kain halted at the center of the bridge and turned hesitantly, hands raised slightly in a gesture of appeasement. Yagari was standing a couple of yards away, and if the man's glaring blue eye and stony face hadn't been enough to tell Kain that he meant business, the fact that he wasn't smoking would have done it. Anything a hunter needed two hands for was not something in which Kain wanted to participate—unless that hunter was Kiryuu, of course.

"Hang around the Sun Dorm often, leech?" Yagari drawled.

"I patrol the grounds nightly, on behalf of the Night Class president," Kain answered slowly.

"Didn't look like _patrolling_ to me. Looked more like…_salivating_."

Kain didn't know what to say to that, since it was probably true, though couched in the crudest possible terms.

"What were you doing there?" Yagari asked, in a hard voice.

Kain said nothing, since there was nothing he could say without lying or giving away Kiryuu's secret. When Yagari saw that he wasn't going to answer, he produced the dagger he had nicked Kain with and licked the blade. It was a vampiric sort of gesture, and seeing it from a hunter gave Kain the creeps. Everyone knew the power of hunters derived ultimately from vampires, but the hunters normally presented themselves as the polar opposite of vampires.

"I'll ask you one more time before I stop being nice," Yagari said, twirling the dagger nimbly around and around his fingers. "What were you doing at the Sun Dorm?"

Kain wondered whether Kiryuu would mind terribly if he just set the man a little bit on fire. "I was taking a walk," he answered finally.

Yagari nodded. "I see."

The hunter approached at a casual speed, and then lunged forward suddenly, slashing the air with his dagger. Kain leapt backward, evading the move instinctively, but his back slammed into something solid—something that hadn't been there a moment before. Red light glowed at Kain's feet, forming a circle a yard in diameter, with arcane sigils and signs inscribed inside. The symbols were different from the ones used for vampire magic, but Kain knew enough to know he was trapped, for a little while at least.

The only thing he couldn't understand was how he had gotten into the hunter's trap. He was sure there had been no markings there a moment before. After a moment's thought, however, he understood. The hunter must have drawn the circle on the bottom of the bridge. His lunge with the dagger had not been directed at Kain, but was instead the means of activating the circle. Some sacrifice was always required to set a spell in motion, and in this case it had been Yagari's saliva and Kain's own blood, which had intermingled on the blade of the dagger.

Yagari smirked as he saw comprehension and consternation dawn on Kain's face.

"You think you can get away with this in plain sight?" Kain asked, not self-righteously, but out of genuine confusion.

"Are we in plain sight?" Yagari asked innocently. "That's funny, I was sure I took care of that."

Kain frowned, feeling a flutter of anxiety at long last. He wasn't sure exactly what sorts of spells an elite hunter like Yagari was capable of, but he knew a vampire spell with the same effect, so he doubted the man was bluffing.

"That's not going to stop Kaname-sama," Kain pointed out. Logic was his best tool in this situation. He had to remain calm and talk Yagari down.

"If he wants to stop me, then why hasn't he?" Yagari asked with a glint of amusement.

That gave Kain pause. Yagari had spilled a drop of his blood earlier, and Kaname would have smelled it by now. The pureblood could well be standing right behind the hunter, ready to rip his heart out, but he could just as well be sitting in the Moon Dorm and chuckling at the thought of leaving Kain out to dry for getting himself tangled up with hunters.

"Now then…" Yagari said. "Where to start?"

The one-eyed hunter began to stroll around the perimeter of the circle that trapped Kain, who turned slowly, keeping his eyes on the man.

"Tell me, leech," Yagari asked in a dark tone, "is it a power trip, scoring with a hunter? Does it make your fangs tingle?"

Kain realized abruptly that Yagari knew. He knew everything—or everything that it was possible to know without sharing Kain's innermost thoughts and feelings.

"It's not like that," Kain answered. The situation was bad, but even so, he wasn't afraid. Not really. Surprised, worried, yes, but not afraid. He didn't truly believe that the man Kiryuu respected so much would hurt him.

Then that belief shattered, as, with a growl, Yagari slashed the air with the dagger again. This time an arcing fan of red light flew from the blade as it intersected the space above the spell circle. With a searing, mind-numbing pain, the light hit Kain's stomach, and he fell to his knees, only distantly aware that he had screamed. When the pain had faded enough for him to control his body again, he groped frantically at his midsection, searching for a burn or a wound, but there was nothing. Only the memory of pain, and the twisted smile of the hunter standing over him, twirling that hideous blade in his fingers.

"Now then, how about we try that again. Tell me what you really want with Zero."

Kain shivered, and all at once the fear he had so far avoided hit him. This man was going to hurt him, as much as he wanted to, for as long as he wanted to, and there was nothing Kain could do to stop him.

"I want to help him," Kain said, his eyes imploring the hunter to understand.

In Yagari's eyes, however, there was nothing but hatred and scorn. Kain watched with dread and panic the knife draw back and slash forward again, and then, just as he flinched in a futile effort to avoid the pain, a new aura flooded his senses.

Above him, standing halfway in the hunter trap, his feet planted firmly, stood Kiryuu, holding back his sensei's arm by the wrist. The wave of relief that swept over Kain was almost as powerful as the pain had been a moment before.

"Don't," Kiryuu said quietly.

There was a moment of silence as teacher and student faced off. Yagari looked like a feral dog whose bone had been stolen. Kain couldn't see Kiryuu's face, but his posture was tense. He got to his feet to back his lover up, and Yagari snarled, jerking his arm away from Kiryuu and making a threatening move toward Kain.

Kiryuu put himself between them again. "Please," was all he said.

Yagari glowered at Kain over his student's shoulder, but, after a moment, he shoved the dagger back into its sheathe.

"Whatever," the older hunter said gruffly, and stalked off into the night, already lighting a cigarette.

Under other circumstances, Kain might have laughed to realize finally where Kiryuu had gotten that all-purpose response of his. Just then, however, he didn't feel much like laughing.

* * *

><p>Kiryuu watched his sensei disappear into the darkness of the trees, along the path leading to the Headmaster's residence. Then he turned to Kain and looked him up and down.<p>

"You okay?"

Kain nodded. He was too shaken up to smile, but it meant more than words could say that Kiryuu had defended him, especially from a fellow hunter and his own sensei.

"Come on," Kiryuu muttered, and began walking back towards the Sun Dorm.

In silence they walked under the arching boughs of the great trees. It was so hard to know what was in the hunter's mind, let alone his heart. Was it too much for Kain to hope that Kiryuu had rescued him because he had gained a place in the hunter's heart? Or was it only that losing Kain's assistance would be an inconvenience?

Once they were in the privacy of the hunter's room, Kain found that he couldn't wait a moment longer. The tawny-haired noble went to his lover and wrapped him in a tight embrace, burying his nose in the silver hair and breathing deeply his scent. Kiryuu did not return the gesture, but neither did he resist it.

"Thank you," Kain murmured into the crook of Kiryuu's throat.

"He wouldn't really have hurt you," the hunter replied, dislodging himself from Kain's arms, to the noble's disappointment. "Sensei likes to test people, that's all. It may be a little extreme, but—we lead dangerous lives. Knowing where someone stands can mean the difference between life and death."

Kain appreciated that Kiryuu was letting him into his world a little by explaining these things. "I understand," he said. "So did I pass the test?"

Kiryuu chuckled humorlessly. "I didn't say he was testing _you_."

Kain was quiet for a moment, considering the implications. Kiryuu turned away, and stripped off his clothes before climbing into bed in his boxers.

"I just want to sleep," the hunter said. "But you can stay if you want."

That was an odd statement, coming from someone who claimed to only be using Kain to relieve his carnal desires. For that matter, why had Kiryuu asked Kain along in the first place? The noble wished that the hunter felt comfortable enough in his presence to say what he really wanted.

Kain stepped out of his shoes and moved around the other side of the bed. Before the noble could sit down atop the bedspread as he usually did, however, Kiryuu reached out and drew the covers back on Kain's side of the bed. Kain had been inside Kiryuu's body dozens of times, but he had never before been allowed under Kiryuu's covers, not even when they were making love. For a long moment he simply stared at the triangle of exposed sheets, fearful this was another test he didn't understand.

"You gonna stand there all night?" Kiryuu asked impatiently.

At last, Kain moved to accept the unspoken invitation. Not wanting to overstep his bounds, he removed his jacket, but left the rest of his clothes on. To his surprise, however, Kiryuu sat up and began unbuttoning the noble's shirt.

A tingle swept over Kain's skin from head to foot, and then he began to blush everywhere, as though his blood was drawn to the surface by the tidal force of Kiryuu's gravity. His heart drummed against his ribs so insistently that he was sure the hunter heard it. Despite Kiryuu's stated intentions, the noble couldn't keep his manhood from stirring.

"Just sleep," Kiryuu repeated warningly, as he undid the last button and pushed the shirt off Kain's broad shoulders.

Kain nodded, and shimmied quickly out of his pants and socks. Then he lifted the covers and, with the trepidation of one entering unknown waters, slid between the sheets. A dizzy wave of affection and pleasure came over him as he nestled down in the cozy bedclothes, surrounded in the hunter's intoxicating aroma. He could happily have stayed in that bed, with Kiryuu next to him, for the rest of his life.

* * *

><p>Aidou shuffled his feet impatiently as he waited outside Kaname's door. By all rights, Kain should have been with him, but Aidou's cousin had become increasingly difficult to find over the past months. Probably he was off panting after Kiryuu again. Aidou didn't see the appeal, personally. Sure, the guy was hot, and maybe there was something a little kinky about doing it with a hunter, but Kiryuu's personality was more than enough to negate that. It wasn't just that the hunter was cold enough to give you frostbite, or that he had a stick up his ass the size of a two-by-four, or even that he was prejudiced against his own kind. He was just so…<em>boring<em>.

Of course, Kain was fairly boring, too, Aidou reflected, frowning at the elaborate plaster molding on the ceiling as he pondered the matter. It was pretty amusing that the Day Class girls called him Wild-kun, considering that refusing to wear a tie or button his shirt properly was about the wildest thing he'd ever done. If the humans ever found out that the only reason for that was Kain's crippling claustrophobia, they'd—

"Kaname-sama will see you now," Seiren's low, cool voice said next to Aidou's ear, startling the small blonde enough to jump visibly. She was like a shadow, that one, gliding from place to place without leaving any sign of her presence.

"Thanks," Aidou muttered. He followed her into Kaname's suite, through the sitting room, and into the office.

The pureblood was sitting behind his desk, sipping a wine glass of blood substitute and gazing pensively out the window and into the night. As always, he was the picture of refined elegance, yet he radiated an aura of barely restrained power. That aura prowled around Aidou now, seeming almost to sniff and snarl at him like a wild animal. Aidou's skin tingled at the feeling, and his heart beat faster.

"Hanabusa," Kaname acknowledged at last, turning slowly to face him.

Aidou gave a slight bow. "You asked me to let you know if I came across in leads in my research…?" Aidou reminded Kaname, as he placed a worn and yellowed volume on the desk.

The blonde vampire opened the book and pointed out the relevant passage, then waited for the pureblood to scan it. Kaname's eyes flicked over the paragraph twice.

"Interesting," the pureblood said at last, looking surprised and thoughtful. "Have you spoken of this to anyone else?"

"No. I thought I should come to you first."

"Let's keep it that way for now."

Aidou nodded, but he couldn't avoid a small pang of guilt at being unable to warn his cousin.

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>__: Wow, seems like shamelessly begging for reviews really works! Thanks, everyone. I'm a little too proud to do that every chapter, though, so let's try a different tactic. *dangles Zero off cliff* Review or the kid gets it!_


	12. Chapter 12

It was anathema for a hunter to let his guard down with a vampire, but in that quiet, unassuming way of his, Kain had managed to make Zero feel safe in his presence: safe from threats, safe from demands, and safe from judgments. Lulled by the soporific rhythm of the noble's heartbeat and breathing, and surrounded by his scent and his warmth, Zero's thoughts slowly unraveled and became dreams.

He dreamed of running through the woods, chasing and being chased by vampires and hunters alike. He dreamed of being excommunicated by the Association, and then of being its President. Finally he dreamed that he was in his old house, snuggling in bed with Ichiru as they had always done during those few, golden years before their family was destroyed.

"'chiru…" Zero mumbled, hugging his dream twin closer. The other boy seemed somehow firmer and bulkier than he ever had before. Zero blinked his way out of sleep, and abruptly realized that he was lying half on top of Kain. He peeled himself off the vampire's chest and sat up.

By the clock, Zero saw that he had slept away the entire day, and it was now early evening. Kain was still fast asleep, with his absurdly orange hair in disarray, but as Zero shuffled into the bathroom to relieve his neglected bladder, he noticed that the noble's clothes had migrated onto hangers, and as he shuffled out again he saw that there was a half-finished problem set on his desk, written in what appeared to be Greek.

Somehow the presence of these things was less irritating to Zero than it might once have been, and instead of kicking the noble out or fleeing himself, Zero slid back under the covers and savored the last few minutes of warm sleepiness. Inevitably, the hunter's attention was drawn to Kain, and as it often did, the sight of the vampire so unguarded provoked an uneasy sense of guilt.

Zero had never been happy about using Kain, and the more tenderness and affection the noble showed him, the worse he felt about it. It was like watching someone dive off a cliff without checking to see if there was water below him. Sometimes Zero just wanted to shake Kain and yell at him to stop offering up his heart to be broken, and only the thought of what would happen if Kain actually heeded his words stopped the hunter.

As Zero's gaze traced the lines of Kain's face, he felt that hatefully familiar lust stirring inside him. Just like the moon, Zero's vampiric side was stronger by night, and so was the infuriating curse (or whatever it was). It wasn't so strong that he was going to lose his senses tonight, but it was still difficult to resist, and having Kain so near wasn't helping. Zero's body remembered the many hours of pleasure spent in Kain's arms, and that made the noble's presence an almost painful temptation.

But really, the hunter found himself thinking, why wait for another attack? Why not just get it out of the way now, so he could enjoy a couple of days with his sanity intact? Zero lay miserably fighting with himself for several minutes, going back and forth with arguments and counterarguments, frowning and chewing his lip the whole while, until finally he gave in.

* * *

><p>Kain was having the most realistic wet dream of his life. In it, Kiryuu had tied him to the bed and was having his way with Kain's body, using the noble's cock like a sex toy for his own pleasure. Out of this hazy fever-dream, Kain's mind emerged to discover that Kiryuu really was on top of him.<p>

The hunter's eyes were closed, but his lips were parted. Kain couldn't suppress a groan as the hunter slid down his rock-hard length, using his weight to settle on it to the hilt. When Kiryuu's lashes fluttered open at the sound, Kain saw intelligence and awareness in the hunter's beautiful lavender eyes, and he nearly exploded in the wave of joy and excitement that swept over him.

Grasping Kiryuu's hips, Kain stilled the hunter's motions until he could summon more stamina. Those few moments spent hanging suspended over the edge of rapture, engulfed in the tight, slick heat of Kiryuu's body, were the sweetest agony Kain had ever known. When the nearness had receded, he sat up, shifting Kiryuu's body along with him. The dream version of Kain might be happy to let Kiryuu keep him at arm's length, but the real Kain needed to hold his lover and taste his lips.

Kiryuu allowed it, but his gaze slid away when Kain kissed him. His reticence only provoked Kain to kiss him more deeply, until finally the hunter turned his head away with a growl and resumed riding Kain with increased vigor. The hunter's movements were powerful, yet controlled, just like Kiryuu himself. Frustrated by the ease with which Kiryuu maintained his distance even when they were as close as two people could be, Kain turned his attention to the other's manhood, teasing and fondling it until at last he coaxed a moan from the silver-haired hunter.

Kain's frustration drained away entirely at that, and he devoted himself to Kiryuu's pleasure, until the hunter was writhing in his arms and clutching Kain so hard that his nails were on the verge of drawing blood. Kiryuu came with a cry muffled against Kain's shoulder, and the hunter was so overwhelmed in the aftermath that he trembled, unable to move, in Kain's arms, as the noble found his own release.

Kain collapsed backward onto the mattress, taking Kiryuu with him, and for long moments, the hunter simply lay panting in the noble's embrace, their bodies still joined, until at last, without so much as a word or a look, Kiryuu dismounted and, moving somewhat unsteadily, disappeared into the bathroom. The sienna-haired vampire's mind, still shaking off the vestiges of sleep, reeled at what had just happened, and he gave himself an experimental slap on the cheek just to make sure he was actually awake.

* * *

><p>Kain dressed himself and changed the bedding while Kiryuu was showering. That was another domestic task he had never performed before Kiryuu had demanded it of him, but the noble wasn't nearly as inept at changing sheets as he was at sewing. He still felt a bit sheepish every time he saw the clumsily sewn buttons on the hunter's uniform, even though Kiryuu had never complained about it.<p>

While he waited for the hunter to get out of the shower, Kain sat at Kiryuu's desk and tried to finish up his last Differential Equations homework problem, but he couldn't focus on it. His mind kept drifting between the alarming encounter with Yagari, Kiryuu's unexpected invitation to share his bed, and the mind-blowing way he had woken up. It all had some shared significance, but Kain couldn't make it all add up as easily as a math problem.

When Kiryuu emerged from the bathroom, he was naked, and although the hunter's lack of modesty was heartening, his lack of eye contact wasn't.

"No injuries?" Kain asked, glancing up and down Kiryuu's slender yet muscular body. There were no wounds that he could see. "I thought I saw you limping yesterday."

"I broke some bones," Kiryuu said distantly, as he pulled some casual clothes from his dresser and began to put them on. "But they're fine now."

Kain nodded to himself. He had thought Kiryuu's power level was about level B, and this healing speed confirmed it. He sometimes wondered if Shizuka had really been as crazy as most people seemed to think. She had certainly created a formidable weapon, and aimed it directly at the vampire high society she had so detested.

"So the hunt went okay?"

"I'm fully qualified as a hunter now, if that's what you mean."

Kain didn't miss the hint of pride in Kiryuu's otherwise impassive voice. He grinned. "That's great. Congratulations." How strange it was to be genuinely happy about the advancement of a hunter. "So there weren't any…um…complications?"

Kiryuu rolled his eyes and closed his dresser drawer with a loud thunk. "Just ask what you wanna ask."

"Did you have an attack?"

Though he must have been expecting the question, Kiryuu sighed heavily nonetheless. "Yeah."

* * *

><p>Kain didn't exactly look surprised, but he was obviously disappointed. Zero felt somewhat irritated by that, seeing as he was the one who had been most personally affected—well, and Kaito, of course.<p>

"…Yagari…?" Kain asked tentatively.

Zero flushed slightly. "No. Kaito." He paused, then added in a mumble, "Sensei was there, though."

Kain needed a moment to process that. Zero found the look on the noble's face satisfyingly amusing.

"So the pre-emptive strategy didn't work," the noble concluded.

"It worked," Zero corrected him. "Just not for as long as I'd hoped."

"Are you sure? Couldn't it have been a coincidence?"

Zero blinked, wondering why Kain felt the need to suggest that. Was that what the vampire wanted? For Zero to continue having attacks? Had he been disappointed by his encounters with the sane version of Zero?

"Would you rather it had been?" Zero asked quietly. His tone betrayed his uncertainty, and he cursed himself for that, but it was too late to take it back.

Kain looked up sharply. His expression was aggrieved, and his voice utterly sincere as he replied, "No, of course not."

Zero did not reply immediately, and, sensing the hunter's unease, Kain crossed the room and kissed his lips lightly. The curse (or whatever it was) was well-sated at the moment, but even so Zero sensed it stirring again in the shadows of his mind at the intimate contact.

"I much prefer the real you," the noble murmured.

Zero scowled, wishing Kain would hide his feelings better, so that the hunter wouldn't have to feel guilty about not returning those feelings. But perhaps that was disingenuous? After all, it was Kain's feelings that caused him to treat Zero so gently, to tolerate his coldness and prickliness, and Zero might very well have cracked under the stress of his curse by now if it weren't for that.

Zero huffed. "Even if the real me doesn't care about you?"

"Yes."

Zero closed his eyes and tried to pinpoint what it really was that bothered him so much about Kain's feelings for him, but it was difficult to think with the noble's long fingers carding through his hair and tracing delicate paths on the sensitive skin around his ears.

"Even if I stop sleeping with you?"

"Of course." Kain's smile was audible.

"Then how come you never liked me before all this?"

There was a long silence, and Zero opened his eyes to see Kain frowning and looking thoughtful.

"I didn't know you," the noble answered finally. "I didn't know what kind of person you are. I didn't know how strong you are—how much you've overcome."

Zero had to look away. The earnestness in the noble's voice was somehow distressing, not to mention embarrassing.

"I didn't know you were generous, or honest, or shy…" Kain continued. "I just knew you were the scary hunter who always glared at us. I didn't realize you were capable of needing someone. But I know now—and as long as you need me, I'll be here. Longer, if you want me."

"I can't give you what you want," Zero muttered.

"I guess that depends on what I want, doesn't it?"

* * *

><p>"The hunter is staring at you," Ruka breathed into Kain's ear. Her long, wavy hair brushed his neck as she leaned over him from behind.<p>

Kain glanced up at Kaito Takamiya. The hunter, in the guise of a student teacher, was indeed staring at Kain as he continued to deliver his guest lecture on historical Hunter-Vampire relations. The direction of his gaze, when combined with his gory and volatile subject matter, had the odd effect of suggesting that Kaito held Kain personally responsible for each and every historical atrocity perpetrated by vampires against hunters.

Ruka was not the only one who had noticed Kaito's fixation, as most of the class seemed to find the drama in their own classroom more interesting than any historical ones. Aidou in particular was smirking at Kain with a knowing look. Kain glared at his cousin. Kaname, at least, seemed completely uninterested, though that might bode ill if Kaito decided to take a page out of Yagari's book. Kain had, naturally, reported the incident with Yagari to the pureblood. He had received the distinct impression that Kaname already knew all about it.

"He wants you," Rima whispered into Kain's other ear. Kain batted his sister's girlfriend away like a pesky fly and she withdrew, giggling.

Kain gave up taking notes that had been desultory to begin with, and instead returned Kaito's stare. After a while, Kaito's words stopped having any meaning, and faded to a quiet buzz. He was a good-looking man, Kain reflected, a strong hunter, undoubtedly, and a close friend of Kiryuu's. Perhaps he was better suited to help the silver-haired hunter than Kain was. That thought rankled, but Kain forced himself to consider it.

Kain had seen the two hunters together often enough, during Kaito's frequent visits to the school. Kaito often joined Kiryuu on his patrols of the campus, and sometimes helped him supervise class change-overs. Kaito was one of the only people in the world that Kain had seen Kiryuu smile at or laugh with. Certainly he was far more successful in getting Kiryuu to talk than Kain had ever been.

Kain's thoughts drifted on in this fashion at length, until Ruka interrupted them by shaking his shoulder.

"Huh?" he grunted, staring up at her smirking face.

"Are you coming?" she asked. "Or do you want to keep making eyes at the hunter?"

Kain looked around and saw the room was almost empty. Somehow class had ended without him noticing, though Kaito still stood at the lectern, keeping up his glare at Kain as he collected his notes.

"I'd like a word with him, if you don't mind," the hunter called in a frosty tone that clearly communicated that he was going to have that word even if they did mind.

Ruka's slim fingers tightened on Kain's shoulder.

"It's okay," he murmured to her. "I'll catch up with you."

She shot him a look of concern, but he just smiled reassuringly, and so she left, though not before sneering at Kaito.

"Is there a problem?" Kain asked, descending the steps to the lectern, where Kaito was zipping shut his briefcase.

"There won't be, unless you make one, vampire," Kaito answered, using the name of Kain's species like an epithet.

Kain just looked at the hunter implacably.

"Stay away from Zero," Kaito demanded.

"I'll stay away from him if that's what he wants," Kain replied calmly.

"He doesn't need you," Kaito snapped. "I can take care of him."

Kain's brows lifted a notch. "If that's what he wants," he replied. He tried to keep his tone even and neutral, but even Kaito seemed to catch some hint of unhappiness.

"It is," Kaito said firmly.

"Then he needs to tell me that himself." This time Kain was far surer of himself. Maybe someone like Kaito would be better for Kiryuu, and if Kiryuu ever decided that then Kain would have no choice but to concede. But Kain was the one who'd woken up today with the silver-haired hunter in his arms, not Kaito. And Kain didn't think Kiryuu would thank Kaito for trying to put words in his mouth.

"If that's all, then…?" Kain asked with a questioning look.

Kaito nodded grudgingly, and Kain left the classroom. Before he had gone more than a few steps, however, someone grabbed his elbow and dragged him into a side hallway. It was Ruka.

"_Zero Kiryuu_?" she demanded in a hiss. "Is _that _who you've been sneaking around with, Akatsuki?"

Kain's face flushed with color, and his stomach sank. Clearly she had been eavesdropping. "Um…yes?"

She stared at him in a wide-eyed shock and horror for a long moment, during which Kain wished for nothing so much as a hole in the ground that he could crawl into and hide. It wasn't that he was ashamed of being with a hunter—he wasn't, truly. It was just that it was going to be so difficult to explain, and in the meantime his beloved sister kept looking at him like she'd caught him putting the moves on a goat.

Kain sighed, and steeled himself for a long night full of many questions.

* * *

><p>"Did you get the last Diff. Eq. problem?" Kain asked, leaning in the door of his cousin's room in the Moon Dorm.<p>

It was nearly dawn, and Kain was trying to finish up his homework before going to bed. Most of the night had been spent allaying Ruka's concerns about his mental health, and it was quite late by the time he'd talked her down. What with all the drama in his life lately, he'd been neglecting school, and now he was struggling to catch up. Vampire parents weren't nearly so overbearing as human ones, but he would be in an awkward position if word started to get around that his behavior had changed significantly.

"Huh?" Aidou said, looking up from his computer. "Oh, the one with the damped pendulum? I haven't really looked at it yet."

That was unusual. Math wasn't just one of Aidou's strong subjects, it was one of his passions. The petite blonde could normally be counted on to explain each problem in depth.

Kain realized that his cousin was giving him a strange look. "You okay?" Kain asked, arching one sienna-colored eyebrow.

"Yeah. Just a little busy, that's all," Aidou answered, but he flicked his eyes upward towards the ceiling—their secret signal referring to Kaname. Then he started tapping his fingers loudly on a manila folder next to his laptop.

Now both Kain's eyebrows went up, and then came back down, furrowing in confusion. He tilted his head questioningly.

"I'll be right back," Aidou said abruptly, and, without further explanation, left the room.

Kain reached out, slowly, and flipped open the folder. The name at the top of the first page was all he needed to see to understand Aidou's strange behavior. Kain's first instinct was to find Kiryuu and let him know what Kaname was planning. The longer he thought about it, however, the more he realized that he couldn't tell Kiryuu, because this plan had a shot at working, but Kiryuu would go to any lengths to prevent it even so.

"Fuck," Kain whispered, flipping the folder shut. He wished he had never seen it.

* * *

><p><span><em>AN<em>_: Updates are going to be slow for a while now that I am in school again. I am working on my PhD (in mathematics) and I have my Qualifying Exams in a few weeks, after which I will be starting my dissertation proposal, and of course I'm teaching as well. So needless to say it is a stressful and hectic time. Hopefully I will be able to update about once a month or so despite all that. Reviews do help motivate me, so I'll just leave you with that and the big white box. Drop a word or two in it._


	13. Chapter 13

The high-pitched shrieking emitted by the crowd of humans sounded to Zero's enhanced hearing like a parking lot full of car alarms all going off at the same time. It was even more aggravating than the dozen or so overlapping vampiric auras that swarmed over his hunter senses.

"Back in line!" he barked at the mob of star-struck teenagers, unleashing his most wrathful look on them. Cowed by his air of menace, the humans scrambled back off the edges of the stone walkway with only a modicum of grumbling.

"You're pretty good at that," Kaito called, clearly amused, from his side of the walkway. He'd been hanging around more often in the couple of weeks since their fateful hunt, and today he was filling in for Yuuki.

Zero merely grunted and shot a lone girl trying to escape the ranks with a piercing death glare. She squeaked and scurried back into line. The silly mice were always trying to throw themselves into the lions' jaws.

There was a creaking from the gates, and then a chorus of sighs and whispers as the objects of the humans' admiration appeared.

"Oh, my lovelies!" a syrupy voice called. "You're even more effervescent today than yesterday!"

The high-pitched squealing doubled in volume at this. Zero pinched the bridge of his noise.

"_Effervescent?_" Zero heard Kain mutter to his boisterous cousin. "They're not fizzy drinks, Hana."

"They're as bubbly and sparkling as the finest champagne!" Aidou declared with shining eyes.

"Stop comparing people to drinks, leech," Kaito growled at the small, enthusiastic blonde. "Or I might get the wrong idea."

Aidou smirked. "My apologies, hunter-san. I didn't mean to leave you out. I'm sure you're as delightful as"—the blonde vampire looked Kaito up and down—"forty ounces of malt liquor."

There was a ripple of laughter from the vampires. Zero considered it to Kain's credit that the tawny-haired vampire managed to keep a mostly straight face.

"You—" Kaito began furiously, but Zero stepped in before the situation could escalate any further.

"Enough, Aidou," Zero said sharply, flaring his hunter aura so as to draw the attention to himself.

"Ah, my dear, sweet plum schnapps!" Aidou exclaimed, seizing upon Zero as the new target for his inanity. "Never fear, no champagne can compare to your charm."

Zero's face darkened with both irritation and a hint of embarrassment, remembering that night in the woods when he had pounced on Aidou and 'charmed' his pants off. Thankfully, Kain grabbed his much shorter cousin in a headlock and dragged him away, to the disappointment of the crowd, which had been hanging on every word. Before they left, Kain's eyes caught Zero's momentarily with an apologetic look, and Zero's scowl softened.

When the last of the vampires had passed, and the humans had dispersed to their morning classes, Kaito and Zero fell into step next to one another, and began Zero's usual morning patrol of the campus.

"I got an assignment from the Association yesterday," Kaito said, as they stepped onto the bridge over the lake, heading for the Moon Dorm.

"Yeah?" Zero asked idly.

He was taking stock of the last few red and gold leaves of autumn. The trees had shed most of their brilliant foliage, baring their skeletons for winter. It had been winter on that night when _she _had painted the snow crimson with Zero's blood, but in spite of that hateful memory, he felt an affinity for the season. There was a solemn and spare kind of beauty in the darkest season of the year.

"It's in Iwate," Kaito continued.

Zero frowned. "Must be a really _special _assignment if they're sending you that far," he remarked.

As Yagari's former apprentices, they were prime targets for the worst assignments the Association had to offer. Sometimes that meant wandering in circles for days only to discover the supposed 'vampire' was just some degenerate human. Other times it meant finding a dozen vampires where only one had been reported. Any assignment could turn out to be a petty mind-fuck, or a malicious death-trap.

Kaito grunted in agreement. "I somehow don't think they would spring for travel costs just to annoy me."

"Who else is going?" Zero asked.

"No one."

Zero raised his eyebrows.

"Well, they _say_ there are only three E's…" Kaito explained.

Zero snorted.

"So I was hoping you'd come with me. I'll split the fee with you, of course."

Zero hedged. "What about Sensei?"

"He's in the field right now."

"Cross?"

Kaito shook his head.

"There are other hunters, Kaito," Zero insisted, folding his arms.

"You're worth three of any other hunters I know."

Zero scowled despite the compliment. "You know what'll happen," he muttered uneasily, looking out over the lake to avoid eye contact. "Nothing's changed."

"I know, but…" Kaito shrugged helplessly. "I need you."

Whenever he was with Kaito, Zero tried to avoid thinking of that night on the mountain. Inevitably, he failed, but at least he could avoid talking about it. Sometimes, though, he got the impression that there was something more Kaito wanted from him than his hunting skills. Zero favored his childhood friend with a suspicious look.

"This better not be some weird, twisted attempt to get me in bed, Kaito," Zero said in a low, steely voice that he normally reserved for use on vampires.

Kaito's eyes widened slightly. "It's not, I swear," he answered.

The ashy-haired hunter sounded sincere, but Zero still had reservations. He frowned at Kaito for a moment, then smiled suddenly. Somehow Kaito looked even more alarmed by Zero's smile than he had by his frown.

"Then you won't mind if I bring…something to relieve myself with," Zero said.

Kaito looked puzzled. "Uh—no, of course I don't mind," he replied slowly. "I didn't realize you had…uh…something like that."

"Well, I do have this one thing…"

* * *

><p>"You said some<em>thing<em>, not some_one_, Zero!" Kaito hissed furiously, glaring over his shoulder at Kain, who was standing next to the open trunk of luggage and watching them with a mild expression. Kaito had dragged Zero away a few yards to have a word with him.

"And _you _said you weren't trying to sleep with me," Zero replied every bit as rancorously as Kaito.

Taken aback, the ashen-haired hunter straightened. "I'm not."

"Then you shouldn't mind."

"Of _course _I mind! What are you thinking, bringing a vampire on a hunt?!"

"He won't come on the actual hunt. I'll leave him in the hotel. Just think of him as some extra luggage."

"Luggage doesn't suck blood!"

"You know I can hear you, right?" Kain asked calmly from his position by the trunk.

Kaito glared and dragged Zero away another few yards. "You don't need him. I can take care of you better than _he _can."

Zero groaned and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, exasperated with Kaito's hardheadedness. "Kaito. Please try to understand. You're like a brother to me. I don't feel that way about you, okay?"

"For the last time, _neither do I!_" Kaito whisper-shouted. "Not everybody is in love with you, you know!"

Zero blinked at his friend for a moment in complete astonishment. Irritation followed quickly in the wake of relief. "Then why do you keep trying to convince me to sleep with you?" he demanded.

"So you won't sleep with _that_," Kaito growled, glaring at _that_ in question, who was still watching them innocently.

"I can, uh, still hear you," Kain said.

Kaito dragged Zero away a further ten yards, much to the silver-haired hunter's exasperation.

"What's so bad about him?" Zero asked flatly, folding his arms.

"He's a vampire."

"So am I."

Kaito jerked his head back and flashed Zero a hurt look. "I know. But I don't think of you like that."

"Well, maybe you should start. If it'll make you stop treating me like a child."

Kaito slumped a little. He cast another look in Kain's direction. "I don't trust him. He's playing you."

"You don't have to trust him. You just have to trust me."

"_You _trust him?" Kaito asked skeptically.

Zero nodded and Kaito's face went through a series of expressions before finally settling on grumpy.

"All right," the older hunter agreed at last. "I'll…back off. But he lays one finger on you, and I won't be held responsible for my actions."

Zero snorted. "I'm gonna lay my boot up your ass if you don't knock it off."

Kaito grumbled, but followed Zero back to the car.

* * *

><p>It was a good thing Zero was driving, because if Kaito had been behind the wheel when Kain's sister jumped out in front of the car, he probably would have sped up and run right over her. Zero slammed on the brakes.<p>

"What the fuck?" Kaito demanded, staring at the elegant female vampire blocking their way.

In the blink of an eye, she had darted around the car and scrambled into the backseat with her brother.

"I'm coming with you," Ruka declared, buckling herself in and clutching her travelling bag tightly. "And I don't want to hear any arguments from any of you!" she added quickly, as three mouths opened to do just that. "You can't just run away with hunters without telling me, Akatsuki," she told her brother, who looked suddenly guilty. "I don't trust you not to get my brother hurt," she informed Zero with a glare. "And _you're_ even worse than Kiryuu," she told Kaito with a sneer, making it sound like the rudest insult possible. The ashy-haired hunter was so incensed that for a moment he could only splutter.

Zero frowned back and forth between the siblings. Ruka appeared both defiant and terrified, one step away from throwing herself on top of her brother to save him from the big, bad hunters. Zero rolled his eyes and then glanced at Kain questioningly, but the sienna-haired vampire just shrugged and looked back apologetically. For a moment, Zero considered forcing Kain to choose between the two of them, but it occurred to him that he might not come out of that contest victorious.

"Whatever," Zero muttered, and hit the gas, ignoring Kaito's shouts of protest and using the child-lock button to keep his fellow hunter from jumping out of the car and running away screaming.

* * *

><p>By the time Zero pulled in for the night to a hotel in Morioka, with the gargantuan snow-capped peak of Mount Iwate looming in the background, he had half a mind to boot Ruka and Kaito out of the car and leave them on the side of the road while he and Kain continued on to a different hotel.<p>

"Why didn't we just take an airplane?" Ruka complained for the hundredth time. "We would have been there hours ago."

"Lean forward and I'll show you," Kaito growled, unsheathing one of the daggers he wore strapped to his wrists.

"He's threatening me!" Ruka shrieked, pointing at Kaito and looking imploringly at her brother. "You heard him, didn't you, Akatsuki! He threatened to kill me!"

Kain merely continued his wildly unconvincing impression of a sleeping person.

"I'll do a lot more than threaten if you don't shut up, leech!" Kaito bellowed.

Zero let his head fall forward onto the steering wheel, causing a sharp honk to issue from beneath the hood. There was a momentary silence, but it didn't last.

"Well, we could have at least taken the bullet train. What kind of hunters are you if you can't even sneak weapons onto a train? And where are we, anyway?" Ruka groused, peering out the window and spying the flicking neon letters that spelled out 'vacancy'. "Oh, gods—don't tell me you plan to stay in this flea-infested rat-trap!"

"You should feel right at home with fleas," Kaito answered her, getting out and slamming his car door behind him. "They're blood-suckers just like you."

"You disgusting little thug!" Ruka shouted, following right on his heels. "I'll _show_ you blood-sucking, if you don't stop spewing your hate-speech!"

"Oh, Zero, save me!" Kaito shrilled in a mockery of Ruka's earlier shrieks. "She's threatening me, you heard her!"

Their voices faded away as Kaito marched into the hotel's front entrance and Ruka stomped after him, still giving him an earful. Zero took a deep breath, enjoying blessed silence for the first time in eight hours.

"Sorry about Ruka," Kain apologized. "She…well, we both get a little overprotective of each other sometimes. We only had each other, growing up."

Zero looked sidelong at the tawny-haired vampire, feeling vague curiosity for the first time about the noble's family. He wondered suddenly if Ruka was the sister who Kain had been forced to watch raped by a pureblood, but of course he couldn't ask. He felt empathy for the siblings though, something that had been totally lacking when he first heard that story. Like Zero and Kaito, Kain and Ruka had suffered at the hands of a pureblood. Unlike the hunters, however, the two nobles could never have their vengeance. Their only recourse was to ally themselves to a different pureblood.

"It's fine," Zero said quietly. "I get it. I was the same way, before…" He trailed off, unable to explain more. He'd never been able to talk about Ichiru. Never. The emotions there were still too raw and painful, like broken glass in his throat.

Kain leaned forward from the backseat and caught Zero's hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing the back. "Thank you," he whispered.

Zero nodded, once. And that was all there was to say.

* * *

><p>A cloud of steam billowed into Kain's face as he entered the small bathroom where Kiryuu was showering. The hunter had left the door open an inch, and that gap had called to Kain until he could resist no longer. He wasn't sure if it was quite the invitation he hoped it was, but he was willing to risk finding out.<p>

"Shut the door," Kiryuu called lowly, over the roar of the shower.

Kain did so, and felt hunter magic flare around him as a number of sigils scrawled on the walls in charcoal began to glow. At the familiar feeling, all the blood in his body began to rush south, and he shed his clothes in a hurry.

There was no bathtub, only a narrow shower stall. Kiryuu's naked body was a blur behind the steamy glass until Kain opened the shower door, and then he savored the sight of the hunter, dripping wet, pale, smooth skin flushed with the heat, his hair slicked back and dark grey from the water. Kain had seen Kiryuu wet and naked plenty of times, since the hunter had a tendency to pass out when he was in need of bathing. What he had never seen was Kiryuu's soapy hands running all over his own body, skimming over those lithe muscles.

"Are you coming in or not?" Kiryuu muttered, shooting Kain a sideways glance.

Kain realized he had been standing half-in and half-out of the shower with his mouth hanging open for several seconds. He closed his jaw with a snap and entered. The space was cramped, hardly big enough for the two of them, but that was all right with Kain. He wanted nothing more than to be pressed up against his hunter, with nothing in between them.

Kain took his time, worshipping Kiryuu's body with his mouth and his hands, relishing the soft sounds of pleasure, and the way the hunter's fingers stroked over Kain's chest and shoulders, the way they slid into his hair and clenched there. They made love standing up, with Kiryuu's legs wrapped around Kain's waist, his back arching against the glass.

After, Kiryuu climbed into Kain's bed alongside him, and when Kain wrapped the hunter in his arms, there were no complaints.

* * *

><p>Gray dawn crept in around the cheap hotel curtains like a nagging voice that could not be ignored. The time of vampires was waning, and the time of hunters waxing. Zero knew that he should get up, wash, and eat, but Kain had draped himself over Zero in the night, and now his tawny head lay pillowed on Zero's shoulder, and somehow Zero couldn't bring himself to wake the noble.<p>

It didn't help that the task awaiting Zero would be a grim one. The night was the time for vampires, and in darkness all sins could be hidden, but in the light of day it was hunters who were left to clean up the messes left behind. It also didn't help to be so far from the places to which he had become accustomed. Zero didn't exactly think of Cross Academy as his home, but it was at least familiar.

Homesickness was a malady that Zero knew well. For a long time he had been adrift at sea in a rudderless boat, but unlike Odysseus, there was no longer any home for Zero to return to. That sense of unease, of anxiety, was distant most times, but now, in this strange place, it was acute. Perhaps that was why he let Kain slumber on. In a sky full of strange constellations, Kain was the only star Zero knew how to take his heading from. His quiet breathing and steady heat, and even the leaden weight of his body, had all become familiar before Zero had realized it.

For a few quiet moments while the earth turned to face the sun, Zero felt a kind of peace, and then life intruded as it always does. The phone rang—Kaito, wanting breakfast—the alarm buzzed, Kain stirred, and it was time to get to work.

"Let me go with you," Kain asked, as Zero checked over his supplies one last time.

"No," Zero replied flatly.

"It'll be safer."

"No."

"And faster."

Zero glared momentarily at the noble. "No."

"Two people isn't enough. What if you both get injured?"

Zero sighed gustily and rolled his eyes. "I'll bring my cell phone."

"Take my blood."

Zero fumbled the knife he was packing and dropped it on the table with a clank. "What?" he demanded, eyes round with shock and horror.

Kain's expression faltered briefly, but then firmed. "You haven't had any blood in weeks—months, for all I know."

"I don't need it."

"It'll make you stronger."

"I don't need it, and I don't _want _it," Zero snapped, and Kain winced, then looked away with a hurt expression.

Zero groaned under his breath. "I mean—I just—I don't like drinking blood, okay?"

Kain was still looking elsewhere. Shrugging on his pack, Zero approached the noble.

"Okay?" Zero repeated quietly, peering into Kain's clear, sienna-colored eyes.

The noble met Zero's gaze expressionlessly for a moment, and then a soft smile blossomed on his face. He brushed his fingers around Zero's ear and down the line of his jaw before pressing a chaste kiss onto the hunter's lips.

"Be careful," Kain whispered.

Zero nodded. He was always careful. But all the care in the world had never stopped life from bringing him to his knees.

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>: Thank you so much to everyone for your encouragement on this story. It's for you all that I keep pushing myself to make progress. So, I successfully passed my Qualifying Exam for my PhD program. Now I'm just trying to get back into the hang of writing this story. Many exciting things are still to be written. Unfortunately, one of those things is my dissertation proposal. Joy... Also, I quite realize that 40 oz of malt liquor is a cultural reference that can only be understood by North Americans, but I have no idea what other line would work better there. Maybe you can leave me a suggestion in the box._


	14. Chapter 14

The scent of Kiryuu's blood suffused Kain's dream, and his fantasy of flying vanished, replaced by a panic-stricken nightmare. Unfamiliar rooms and hallways flashed past him in a sickening swirl of color; splinters exploded from a locked door as he kicked it in. Then, at last, Kiryuu lay before him, like some grisly sleeping beauty, his skin chalky white under a scrim of dried blood. Mangled gashes on his arms exposed muscle and bone. His aura was non-existent, and his scent that of death.

Kain's body moved without him, as his mind watched in numb horror. Fangs, tearing at his wrist—blood, spilling into Kiryuu's mouth. Time itself seemed to slow, and each faint spasm of the hunter's heart was a century in coming. Kain felt as though he were tethered to sanity by a single wire, hanging suspended over a chasm of endless darkness.

With excruciating slowness, so faintly that Kain despaired he was imagining it, Kiryuu's heartbeat strengthened. Then he stirred in Kain's arms, and his fangs latched onto the noble's bleeding wrist. Kain shuddered as waves of emotion crashed over him—relief, terror, fierce protectiveness. He rode out the deluge, running his fingers over Kiryuu's body, his hair, his face, confirming his presence, his life, again and again.

Time passed—how long, Kain did not know. The hunter remained unconscious, drinking Kain's blood only out of instinct, but the horrific lacerations on Kiryuu's arms closed and began to heal, and his color returned. He was safe. The hunter's pulse sounded strong and steady in Kain's ears once more, his aura twined sinuously around the room, and his hot, wet tongue lapped at Kain's wrist, sending an electric thrill of pleasure zinging along the noble's nerves.

Gradually, Kain's surroundings swam into focus. He was in Kaito's hotel room. The doorframe had several splintered holes in it, and someone had propped a chair under the knob to keep the door shut. Kain's memory of causing the damage was strangely distant. He had never before been so overwhelmed by terror as to lose track of time and place. He felt both disoriented and hyper-alert.

At the foot of the bed stood Ruka and Kaito, both their faces screwed up with concern, though Kaito's expression was tinged with distaste and distrust, whereas Ruka's was warm with sympathy. Kain's sister was wearing a green nightie that was somewhat less than decent, while the hunter was in ripped and blood-stained street clothes. Her elegant, manicured hand was wrapped around Kaito's upper arm, as though she had been restraining him, and, for some unthinkable reason, the hunter was tolerating her touch.

"Akatsuki?" Ruka asked tentatively.

"What happened?" Kain ground out in a rough voice. He understood why they were there, yet he wished he could be alone with Kiryuu. Sharing blood was nearly as intimate as sex, and it certainly wasn't anything Kain would have chosen to do with Kaito in the room. Even Ruka, with whom Kain had shared blood for years, was an unwanted presence.

Kaito's eyes slid away. "What do you think happened," the hunter muttered, sounding angry and defeated. He shrugged Ruka's hand off at last and righted an overturned chair to sit in. "There were too many. We got separated. I found him with a couple of"—there was a strange hitch in Kaito's voice, and he looked away—"with a couple them on him, sucking him dry. Barely got him out."

"You're not injured," Kain noted. He intended the remark as a simple observation, but it came out sounding like an accusation.

Kaito's eyes blazed. "Good thing I'm not, or he might very well be dead right now!" he snarled. Then, as if he had just comprehended his own words, he grimaced and paled.

Kain took a deep breath, clamping down on his defensive fear and anger, which was stirred at the reminder of how close Kiryuu had been to death.

"Thank you," Kain muttered, unable to make it sound actually grateful. He was grateful Kaito had been there to rescue Kiryuu, but he couldn't help thinking it was Kaito who had dragged Kiryuu here in the first place.

Kaito grunted and folded his arms. "Same to you, I guess," he grumbled.

Ruka smiled and gave an approving nod to the ashen-haired hunter, who rolled his eyes conspicuously. Something must have passed between those two while he was out of it, Kain thought. He could not muster any real interest in the idea, however. All of his mental energy was focused on Kiryuu. He lowered his eyes to the hunter's face, and was startled to find Kiryuu stirring.

Kaito noticed it, too. "Zero?" he asked anxiously, moving around the side of the bed.

Kain stiffened. Despite his desire not to fight with the man, that bestial, instinctive side of himself raised its hackles as the hunter moved nearer. Kain tried to repress it, but he couldn't help letting out a feral growl and drawing Kiryuu away as Kaito reached out to touch his friend.

* * *

><p>The first sound Zero heard as his mind neared consciousness was a guttural growl, and he was certain in that moment that he was still in the pitch black hell of that nest, being eaten alive by <em>them<em>. And if he was not dead, then it was only because _they_ had recognized him as one of their own. He had fallen at last, as he had always known he must, to a place so dark and deep that he would never see the sun again.

Then the scent of something warm, something tawny and sienna and _safe_ reached his nose, and Zero burrowed instinctively into that heat. Every part of his body, from his teeth to his toes, ached with cold. His mind felt as though it was wrapped in gauze, but he was aware enough to recognize the fiercely protective aura enswathing him.

Opening his eyes was a struggle, but Zero succeeded, and found Kain's face filling the whole of his vision. His amber eyes were pools of tender concern, and a place of refuge for Zero's battered spirit. Then something dark moved on the periphery of his vision—Zero flinched away from it, and his mind spiraled into the frantic remembered terror of those dark, blood-spattered tunnels where he had almost come to his end.

Fingers stroked his brow gently, and gentle words were whispered in his ear, but they sounded like a foreign language. Zero shivered and turned his face against Kain's firm chest in a silent plea.

* * *

><p>Kaito watched with clenched jaw and fists as the vampire carried away his best friend, his brother, who had flinched from the mere sight his fellow hunter. He must have followed the leech a few steps, because he suddenly found five sharp fingernails pressing into his bicep, and looked down in surprise to see the female vampire restraining him again. Ruka, or whatever her name was. He glared at her, and she quirked an unimpressed eyebrow.<p>

Kaito cursed, and shook her off. It had come to this, had it? He was being treated like an ill-behaved child by a vampire. She had stopped him from attacking her brother earlier, when the noble had burst into the room acting like a half-crazed E. She'd put him in a head-lock—and wasn't _that _humiliating—then lectured him at the top of her lungs about vampire physiology and the sacred bond of blood-sharing. Kaito had surrendered simply to get her to _shut up_. He couldn't really complain, because Zero's life had been saved, but did that give her the right to manhandle him left and right?

He opened his mouth to give her a piece of his mind, and it was just then that he finally took a good look at what she'd been wearing all this while—or rather, what she hadn't been wearing. He'd been too focused on Zero earlier to really take notice. Kaito felt a line of heat rising from his neck to his cheeks to the tips of his ears.

"What?" she asked defiantly, and gave a haughty toss of her long, rippling, light brown hair.

Kaito made a strangled noise. She gave a throaty chuckle, then patted him on the back with a condescending look, and stalked sinuously from the room.

* * *

><p>There was an ineffable sense of motion, the sound of doors opening and closing, the feeling of sticky clothes being peeled away, and finally the unbearable frigidity of porcelain. Someone groaned—it took the hunter a long moment to realize the sound came from himself. The cold was swiftly assuaged by the warmth of Kain's hands and his whispered words. Hot water licked at Zero's feet. But all these sensations were as distant and indistinct as a faint radio signal that came in and out at random. There were touches, soft ones and firm ones, and motion, and always those gentle, warm words caressing Zero's ears.<p>

As slowly and imperceptibly as night fading into day, Zero's mind rose up through the layers of fog into full consciousness. The random assortment of colors and shapes before him resolved into the hotel's bedspread, beneath which Zero was tucked neatly. Yet the hunter continued to feel disconnected from reality, as though life was a lighted house, and he stood outside in the dark, looking in through a window.

There was a splotch of sienna at Zero's side that drew his gaze. Zero reached out and ran his fingers through the hair. The feeling of the silken strands was strange, as though Zero's skin were brand new and had never felt anything before.

Kain stirred, waking, and fixated immediately on Zero. The noble appeared exhausted and unwell, as though he hadn't slept or eaten in a week. Zero knew that he was responsible for that: the taste of Kain's blood—rich, metallic, and tantalizing—lingered in his mouth.

"Kiryuu," Kain murmured reverently, and moved as though to embrace Zero, but stopped himself at the last moment.

Zero felt a small shock ripple along his nerves at the familiar sound of Kain's voice. He was still outside looking in, but Kain was with him, now, on the inside, looking out.

"How do you feel?" the noble asked anxiously, his amber-colored eyes searching Zero's face.

"I'm—," Zero began. His voice was thick and rough, and he had to clear his throat. "I'm fine."

"Do you mean that the way you usually mean it, or are you really okay?" Kain implored him.

"Huh?" Zero asked blankly.

Kain gave a tremulous smile, and then, like a dam breaking, his controlled façade cracked. He fell upon Zero like a wall of water and drowned the hunter in kisses and caresses, as if he was desperate to touch and smell and taste every part of him at once. Zero endured the flood of affection with dazed bewilderment, until the surge had passed and Kain came to rest, panting, atop Zero's chest.

Hesitantly, Zero stroked the noble's back, soothing him. He still felt numb and disoriented, but he didn't wish for Kain to share the feeling. It was a long time since he had tried to comfort anyone, and the action felt clumsy and awkward, but Kain sighed with pleasure nonetheless, and held Zero closer. When the hunter's hands stilled, Kain captured one and brought it to his lips.

Zero's hand was scrubbed pink and clean, the hunter noticed, free of the dried blood and grime of the tunnels where he had nearly met his end. A series of indented white scars crisscrossing Zero's forearms were all that remained to mark the event.

"Thank you," Zero said. The words came out quieter than he had intended, but the meaning was clear all the same.

"You're welcome," Kain replied simply, lifting himself onto his elbows to gaze down into Zero's eyes with fervent but restrained passion. He kissed Zero again, more tenderly this time, stroking the hunter's cheek softly.

"I mean that, you know," Kain said quietly, drawing back. "You're welcome to anything of mine. My body, my blood…my life…"

Kain's sweet words floated in the air as gently as petals, and Zero knew they weren't meant to hurt him, but he flinched nonetheless. Some hidden, haunted part of himself remembered cherry blossoms falling out of season, and blood splattered on snow. Remembered how passionate romance had birthed vengeance and hatred that had ripped his humanity away and left him broken in a pool of his parents' blood. And that kind of single-minded devotion—it wasn't sane. It wasn't safe. It terrified him.

Zero turned his face to the side and bit his lip, breathing shallowly. A sense of unreality washed over him once more, making the room seem to spin and warp. He wanted to run away, but he couldn't. He was still too weak.

"Kiryuu," Kain murmured. "I…"

Zero squeezed his eyes shut and braced for impact.

There followed a silence so long that the hunter finally gathered his last scraps of courage and looked up into Kain's eyes. The noble looked worried and forlorn, but he mustered a smile when he saw Zero looking at him.

"Never mind," Kain said quietly. "Forget all that."

Zero exhaled in relief, and felt the tension run out of his muscles. He didn't want passionate words, or grand expressions of feeling. What he wanted was someone whose warmth would be there when Zero reached for him. That was all he could accept, and all he could offer in return.

* * *

><p>The sound of bedsprings creaking next door drove Kaito out of his room and into the hotel's lounge. Obviously Zero had forgotten to put up a privacy barrier, and Kaito couldn't exactly fault him for that under the circumstances.<p>

In the center of the U-shaped bar, a middle-aged woman poured drinks lackadaisically in between watching soap operas on a pair of flat-screen televisions. It was the middle of the afternoon, after all. The only other customer was Ruka, who was drinking a beer and toying with her phone. Kaito ordered a gin and tonic.

"Are you even legal?" Kaito asked skeptically, seating himself two places away from her.

She rolled her eyes. "Are you?"

"I'm 22," he replied testily.

"Whatever," she muttered. "When are we getting out of here?"

"When we finish the job," Kaito answered, in a tone that indicated this should be obvious.

"Finish the—" she repeated in disbelief. "What do you mean, finish the job?"

Kaito frowned at her. "What do you think I mean?"

"Well, it sounds like you have a death wish," she snapped back. "You already screwed it up once, what makes you think you can do it right this time? Now that both of you are injured?"

Kaito drained the last of his drink and tapped the glass on the bar, signaling for another. When the bartender had refilled it, he finally answered Ruka.

"Do you think we do this for fun?" he asked in a low voice. "Do you think it's a game?"

Ruka stared back at him mulishly. "I'm not saying to just cut and run. But at least call for reinforcements. That's what any sane person would do."

Kaito snorted and ran his hand over his face. He was starting to feel the alcohol. "You make it sound so easy."

"Well, what's the problem?"

Kaito eyed her sidelong. The problem, in short, was numbers. It was not her fault that she vastly overestimated the number of active hunters capable of clearing a nest of E's. And while it would be satisfying to relieve her of her ignorance about the Association, he had enough judgment left to realize that giving such information to a vampire noble was a potentially disastrous idea. If the vampires ever realized how few true descendants were really out there, the hunters themselves would be hunted to extinction within a handful of generations.

Kaito decided to give her a half-truth, one that was pretty widely known already. "Zero and me aren't exactly on great terms with the rest of the Association," he admitted.

"Why not?"

Kaito scoffed. "Really? You can't guess?"

Ruka scowled. "That's stupid. It's not like he asked for it. Everybody knows Shizuka attacked his family. Besides, he's stable. So why would anyone care about _that_?"

Kaito smirked at the bottom of his glass, which was empty again. "I don't know. Maybe for the same reason other people might treat someone badly just for being born a hunter?"

Ruka straightened, her spine going rigid, and shot him a look frosty enough to chill her beer. "What are you saying?"

Kaito glowered at her. "Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. I've been around that school of yours often enough to see how he's treated by your kind."

Ruka's eyes flashed. "I—we—that's not because he's a hunter! It's because he's an asshole!" With a look of mortification, she clapped her hand over her mouth, and then sighed deeply. "I mean…look, he goes around like he owns the place, barking orders at people left and right—"

"Well, he is _employed _there to _guard_ everyone," Kaito cut in sarcastically. "Do you think that might have something to do with it?"

"—without the least consideration for people's feelings or the proper way of going about things."

Kaito gave her a genuinely mystified look. "The proper way of going about things…? What do you want him to do, lodge a written complaint when one of you nobles is nibbling the neck of some human?"

"Well—well, yes! I mean, no, but he should let Kaname-sama take care of discipline issues. He can't just go around undercutting the authority of purebloods like that."

"Why not?" Kaito asked skeptically.

Ruka looked consternated. "Because he can't!"

"Why?"

Her tone was that of an adult speaking to a petulant child. "Because that's the way our society works."

"So what?"

"So—so if you don't…" She trailed off, and her blazing anger gave way to a bleaker expression, one of fear and resentment. "Then you get cut down to size."

Kaito gazed at her calmly for a long time before answering, and when he did, he weighed his words carefully. He wasn't used to being diplomatic with vampires, but this subject was clearly more than just theoretical for her. He was familiar with the way in which purebloods could destroy lives by their merest whims.

"For some people," he said delicately, "I think they would rather suffer just about anything than submit to that kind of authority."

"Well, those people won't live very long," she muttered darkly into her beer.

Kaito searched for an answer, a way to disagree, but there was nothing he could say. He let her have the last word, bitter word that it was, and tapped the bar for another drink.

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>: Sorry everyone for the long wait. I have actually been working on this chapter steadily throughout the past months, but only making progress at the rate of about a sentence a day! Or more like: ten sentences written and nine deleted. (Good writing requires lots of deletion.) It seemed like every time I sat down to write, I was just so brain dead that even that much exhausted by creative abilities. I hadn't really anticipated the fact that conducting research is actually more mentally tiring than taking classes. Somehow or other I managed to produce this chapter in that fashion. I am on winter break right now, so hopefully the next chapters will come more quickly. Reviews help!_


	15. Chapter 15

Kain woke at dawn to the furtive movements of Kiryuu slipping out of bed. Around the window shades, beams of golden light were beginning to stream, chasing away the grey shadows of the night. The noble's eyes stung from the brightness, and he rolled his face into the pillow and allowed himself to wallow for a moment before crawling out of bed over the protests of his weary and aching body.

A handful of blood tablets shaken up in a lukewarm bottle of water made a poor breakfast. Kain could hardly bring himself to drink the blood substitute. He'd choked down an entire box in the past day, and his stomach made queasy protests at the idea of more. His fangs ached for real blood, but there was nothing to be done. Ruka was willing, as ever, but it wasn't her essence he longed for, and it would be unfair to subject her to the kind of thirst he was suffering now. It was too twisted up with lust and longing.

Kain managed to finish off the blood substitute before Kiryuu exited the shower. He paced uneasily for the rest of the time, checking the items he'd decided to bring, checking the time, checking his phone, checking his face in the mirror to see whether he looked as haggard as he felt. Over the last day, every time he had thought of what to say to Kiryuu about accompanying him today, Kain had decided he was too exhausted to bring it up, and so it had come down to the last minute, and they still had not discussed it.

Finally the bathroom door clicked open, and Kiryuu, towel around his waist, halted in the doorway, staring flatly at Kain. Then, very deliberately, as though he too lacked the energy to broach the subject, he fixed his gaze elsewhere and moved to his luggage, pulling out clothing. There was a heightened sense of purpose and resolve to Kiryuu's movements, as though every little gesture held weight and meaning.

Kain had a hundred questions he wanted to ask as Kiryuu readied himself for the hunt—everything from the mundane 'why don't you wear armor?' to the penetrating 'why are you risking your life like this?', but he restrained himself. Trying to get close to Kiryuu was like snuggling up to a landmine. There were a finite number of disturbances the hunter would tolerate before he exploded.

"I suppose you think you're coming with me," Kiryuu said at last, without looking up, while he carefully laced his heavy, steel-toed combat boots.

Kain folded his arms defensively, still mulishly trying to delay the discussion.

Kiryuu checked several hidden compartments in the sides of the boots, revealing a pair of small knives. Between those and the wickedly sharp metal spikes on the soles, the boots were lethal weapons. Kain had a dim flashback to the ghoulish stories about hunters that had been shared at slumber parties in his youth, and wondered what his younger self would have thought if he had known that someday he would be aroused by the sight of a hunter strapping weapons onto every square inch of his body.

Kiryuu's violet eyes were even sharper than his blades as his gaze pierced Kain's. "Well?"

"I won't get in your way. Just let me watch your back," Kain said. The words came out dull and thick, a product of too little sleep and lingering blood loss.

Kiryuu snorted. "My back will be just fine. All the leeches that had any fight in them are long gone. The rest are just"—he jerked his head as if dispelling an irritating fly—"just trash."

"Then why even bother with them?" Kain pleaded. The noble remembered how easily Kiryuu had dispatched the group of E's in the warehouses near the academy, but he remained unconvinced that this hunt would be that easy. The hunter's tone had not been entirely persuasive, either. There was something he was neglecting to say.

Kain could all too easily imagine how it might happen: the hunter pulling his broken body into some dark corner and curling up to die alone. The memory of Kiryuu's mangled flesh, his blood-spattered face and deathly pallor, haunted Kain's mind like a dreadful apparition. The very thought made Kain want to rip the rabid beasts who had done it to shreds and then burn the shreds to crisps.

Kiryuu's glare was entirely without compassion. "Someone has to clean up the mess your kind makes."

"My—" Kain began to question, before biting his tongue. He was nearly snagged on the verbal barb, but managed to clumsily sidestep at the last moment. Kiryuu must have been as worn out as Kain if he thought the noble was going to rise to that kind of bait. Who did the hunter think he was talking to—Aidou? "All the more reason I should help," Kain asserted.

Something black and ominous, the shadow of some unknown beast, darkened Kiryuu's gaze. He had been even more strange and withdrawn than usual since his return from the brink of death. He'd accepted Kain's frantic need for intimacy in the wake of the disaster, even, so Kain had supposed, responded, but now, somehow, he was more distant than ever.

"You're not qualified for the job," the hunter said slowly.

Kain frowned, not sure whether to be hurt or just confused. "I've fought E's before," he reminded the hunter. "I'm not an amateur. I won't hold you back."

Kiryuu exhaled sharply, looking away. The anger drained from his face, replaced by something like despair. "You don't understand anything," he murmured. He stared into space dully for a moment, then continued packing his supplies with a kind of morbid resignation that baffled Kain.

"I want to understand," Kain said, crossing the room to put himself in the hunter's physical space.

"It's impossible for someone like you."

"Someone like me?" Kain asked, not trying to conceal his hurt this time.

"Someone who was never human."

Kain frowned. There it was again. That complex of Kiryuu's about being born a human. He'd once thought it a superiority complex, but he didn't pretend anymore to understand Kiryuu's complicated feelings and beliefs about his humanity. He wanted to, though. If only he could understand that, then maybe he could find a path through the tangled bower of thorns that guarded the hunter's heart.

"Let me try," the noble implored.

Kiryuu rolled his eyes heavenward as though seeking a witness to his suffering. "If I let you come, is that sister of yours going to insist on coming, too?"

"Probably," Kain admitted, feeling a twinge of guilt and worry about leading Ruka into harm's way. From the outside, his desire to protect Kiryuu might look selfless, but Kain knew very well that it was anything but. On the contrary, it was intensely selfish, as evidenced by the fact that even Ruka's safety was no object before it. But it was too late for him to turn back. It had been too late for some time. Struggling now would only tangle him more tightly in the hunter's knot of brambles.

"If I say no, I suppose you're just going to follow me anyway," the hunter accused, and the ire in his voice was not teasing.

Kain smiled in spite of that, pleased that Kiryuu had come to know him so well. "Of course."

Kiryuu huffed angrily. "This is _my _job," he snapped, shouldering his bag of supplies. "You have no place interfering."

He moved to the door then, and Kain moved along in his wake, fully intent on following no matter what Kiryuu said.

The hunter paused then, and glanced at Kain over his shoulder. "You step one toe out of line and I'll shoot it off. Got that?"

Kain grinned, seizing on the tacit permission in that threat. "Absolutely," Kain assured him. "You're in charge."

"Actually," Kiryuu replied airily, "Kaito's the one in charge this time around."

Kain gulped.

* * *

><p>"All right, listen up, leeches, 'cause I'm only going over this once," Kaito barked, spearing his audience on a pointed glare.<p>

Kain gritted his teeth behind a taut smile, while Ruka merely looked expectant. The older hunter appeared to be enjoying his newfound authority over the noble vampires, just as Kain had expected.

Kaito unrolled a map onto the small, round table provided by the hotel and used a few boxes of ammo to keep it from rolling up again. "Okay. This is the campus, and these are the utility tunnels." He indicated a series of lines on the map. "Our job is to flush out the tunnels. Most of the targets are holed up near the hospital, but we need to clear all the tunnels just to be safe. Now, the last thing we wanna do is drive vamps out into the open, so first thing we'll do is seal off all the entrances with spell barriers."

"Smart," Ruka noted, examining the map intently.

Kain blinked at his sister, wondering when exactly she had stopped screaming at Kaito and started complimenting him instead. It was disquieting to realize that something within her had shifted when he wasn't paying attention.

Kain glanced at Kiryuu to see what he made of the matter, but the silver-haired hunter didn't appear to have noticed. He was sitting on a fuzzy hotel chair with one leg stretched out and the other drawn up to his chest in an oddly defensive posture, eyes trained on the map, with a face as blank as a slate. All traces of amusement at Kain's discomfort had been wiped away, along with any other emotion. Kain wondered what he was seeing on the map, or whether he was seeing it at all.

"Here's the detail map for the tunnels," Kaito continued, as he spread out a new scroll of paper and anchored it to the table. Kain leaned in, trying to shift his focus from Kiryuu's inscrutability to Kaito's instructions. "As you can see, it's pretty complicated, so we're going to use additional spell barriers to break the network into a series of disconnected segments. That way the E's can't hide or double back on us."

Kain nodded thoughtfully, and Ruka made a noise of appreciation. It was a good strategy.

"Once we've placed all the barriers," Kaito continued, "we'll start clearing the tunnels one by one. Ruka and I will stand at the end of each tunnel, inside the spell barrier, and use ranged attacks on any vamps coming our way. Meanwhile Zero and Kain will start at the other end and drive the vamps toward us. Zero will be flaring his aura to get them to move. The rest of us need to keep ours concealed."

"Isn't there some danger of friendly fire?" Ruka pointed out.

Kaito looked at Kiryuu expectantly, but the younger hunter was still staring blankly at the map, and missed his cue to explain. Kaito covered the gap smoothly.

"We'll be using rubber bullets with charms on them," the hazel-eyed hunter answered. "They hurt like hell, but they only kill E's. That brings up an important point, though. See this?" Kaito asked, tapping a box of symbols in the corner of the map. "These tunnels are here for a reason. They house the pipes that carry all the utilities for the university—electricity, gas, steam, you name it. So keep that in mind if you have to fight. Treat all pipes as highly explosive. Obviously that means you can't use fire, Kain."

Kain was startled, having not realized that Kaito was aware of his abilities. Was it paranoid to wonder if there was a file folder with his name on it in some drawer at the Hunter Association? He had no personal issues with any of the hunters he knew, but there was only one whose attention Kain would welcome.

"I wasn't planning to," Kain assured Kaito. There was no need to explain that his ability was next to useless in confined spaces.

"Right. Now, there shouldn't be too many E's left at this point. All the lucid ones have already run for it, I'm sure. I'm only expecting a handful—half a dozen at most—and they'll mostly just be dusters."

"Dusters?" Kain repeated blankly.

"Uh, yeah, you know—Stage III." Kaito gestured impatiently. "Or whatever you vamps call it."

Ruka tilted her head inquisitively. Kain looked to Kiryuu for explanation. The heretofore silent hunter sighed and broke his silence at last.

"When's the last time you saw a noble dumpster-diving, Kaito?" Kiryuu asked. There was a dark sarcasm in his tone that made Kain uneasy. "Once they've thrown their trash away, they don't look at it again."

Kaito eyed the two nobles darkly. Kain shifted awkwardly under the scrutiny, but Ruka just straightened her spine and raised her eyebrows defiantly.

"We know about E's," she said haughtily. "We've fought them before. Rido had a whole army of them."

Kaito observed her skeptically. "Yeah, well, there's E's and then there's E's. These aren't gonna be like the ones Rido had with him." There was a curiously grim note in his tone.

The two nobles exchanged a baffled look. "Then what will they be like?" Ruka asked.

"You'll see—or you won't," Kaito replied cryptically. "Anyway, that's the plan. Just do what you're told, don't get any ideas of your own, and you'll be fine. Any more questions?" he added, in a foreboding tone.

* * *

><p>The university campus was utilitarian rather than picturesque. In lieu of lawns and benches, there were sidewalks and bike racks; instead of balustrades and cornices, there were concrete blocks and poured cement. This impression of economical industry was complemented by the relatively higher age and lower affluence of the students as compared to Cross Academy.<p>

The biggest difference to Cross Academy, however, was the sheer number of students. The crowd streamed around Kain in a dizzying blur of faces and scents, overwhelming his senses. He had never seen so many humans in one place before. At his side, Kiryuu slipped as easily through the crowds as a bird gliding on air, and his expression was as distant and opaque as the snowy peak of Mount Iwate which loomed over the city.

Kain wondered what it was, ultimately, that had drawn Kiryuu back here, to the place where he had almost died. The desire to protect these humans? His friendship with Kaito? Some remnant of family loyalty? Personal vengeance? A pure, stubborn refusal to be defeated?

These were the scattered, semi-coherent thoughts that drifted through Kain's mind as he followed the two hunters on their purposeful journey around the campus, zigzagging between grimy basements and rusted manhole covers where they cast their spell barriers. The work took several hours, and by the end of it, Kain was dragging. It had never occurred to him that vampire-hunting could be so tedious and boring.

The unrelenting sunlight was giving him a headache, and so it was something of a relief when Kaito finally announced that they had laid all the necessary spells.

"Sure you want to take point?" Kaito asked Kiryuu, before they parted ways. The older hunter was eyeing the younger with a hint of worry that Kain found unsettling.

"I'm sure," Kiryuu replied stubbornly.

Kaito sighed and looked as though he wanted to say something, but couldn't think what. Finally, he looked to Kain. "Watch his back," he told the noble.

"I will," Kain agreed. "You watch hers." He nodded to Ruka, who made a derisive noise and scowled at her brother.

Kaito nodded, for once without a hint of animosity, and the two pairs headed in opposite directions to take up their positions at either end of the first section of tunnel.

* * *

><p>The tunnels were cramped, dim, filthy, and hot. Being underground, they should have been cool, but the steam pipes gave off a wealth of heat that had Kain sweating within seconds of entering. The ceilings were low and uneven, forcing them to hunch over often, and the fluorescent bulbs lighting the way were few and far between. A combination of decades' worth of poor ventilation, leaky pipes, and sweaty workers had infused the place with a pungent musk that wrinkled Kain's nose.<p>

From time to time they passed boilers and pumps that clanked, hummed, and hissed, drowning out their footsteps. Most of the construction was concrete, but in older sections it was brick, and there were countless dark nooks and crannies, dead-ends and abandoned side-passages. In a few places, the walls and ground were no more bare dirt with plywood and plastic sheeting tacked over it.

All in all, it was the perfect bolt-hole for desperate vampires. Even at night, there were probably plenty of students wandering the campus. It would be so easy to lie in wait, peering up through a sidewalk grate, until some young, inebriated person wandered past, and, then, quick as a flash, the predator would drag the prey into its den like a spider. A shallow grave would be scratched out in the dirt tunnels, and the remains secreted within, perhaps to be disinterred later, when the bones would be sucked for their marrow.

Kain was on high alert as he followed Kiryuu down the narrow passages, trying to sense any hint of an inhuman aura. What auras he could make out were weak and diffuse, seeming to come from everyone and nowhere at once. The stone and earth around them was blocking his senses, and the flaring of Kiryuu's hunter aura was drowning out what little did make it through. He was beginning to understand how such a formidable hunter could have been ambushed and overwhelmed under these circumstances.

The first few sweeps were uneventful, turning up nothing more threatening than a few rats and a leaking steam valve, but midway through their fourth sweep, Kiryuu thrust out his arm to stop Kain as they came to the foot of a rusted set of metal stairs. The hunter withdrew his flashlight and the Bloody Rose, fixating on a crack in the wall that, upon closer inspection, appeared to have been gouged crudely out of the earth. It was scarcely a foot wide and perhaps four feet high.

The fluorescent light overhead buzzed and flickered on the verge of extinction, but even that poor illumination was enough to render fathomless the shadows within. Kiryuu crouched and aimed both flashlight and gun; Kain, just behind his shoulder, coiled like a tensed spring. Then Kiryuu clicked a button, spotlighting a pale, wretched figure slumped at the far end of the crevice.

There was no hissing, no lunging, as Kain had expected, and no gunshot. Kiryuu merely illuminated the creature, drinking in the sight, letting second after second tick past. Those seconds were enough for Kain's hyper-acute senses to catalog a thousand horrors. The crusty mat of hair; the gleaming crimson eyes with pinprick pupils; the rotting and blackened fangs; the bed of gnawed and splintered bones in which it nested; the tattered gray rags that clung to its body; the skeletal outline of bones beneath its fragile, translucent skin; the desiccated remains of breasts, no more than sacks of skin, hanging forgotten and useless from a sunken chest; and, worst of all, the hideous ruined stumps that had once been limbs, which now resembled nothing so much as the ashen husks of logs burned through by fire, which still held their shape but would collapse at the slightest touch.

After perhaps ten seconds that seemed to stretch into an eternity, Kiryuu pulled the trigger, and the creature exploded into dust that billowed from the crevice, settling on their hair and clothing. Kain shuddered and fought the urge to vomit.

"What was that?" the noble croaked, covering his mouth and nose with his shirt to prevent inhaling any of the remains, which were still settling around them.

Kiryuu, looking at him sidelong, said only, "Stage III."

Kain's eyes widened in understanding. No wonder neither of the hunters had wanted to explain it beforehand. There was no way that words alone could convey the horror of what he had just seen.

"That's how we die," Kiryuu added quietly, "if we're left alone."

* * *

><p><em><span>AN<span>: Sorry to those of you who wanted smut and got horror instead. :) If you're into it, you can go read "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft, which is my favorite of his stories, and my inspiration for the final scene of this chapter. Don't worry, we'll get back to the smut eventually, but there will be some more angst first. Sorry I've slowed down so much with this story. My dissertation (or lack thereof) is eating my brain. (bangs head on keyboard) But I'm still working on this more or less steadily. Thanks for your support! It means a lot to me that people enjoy this._


	16. Chapter 16

"That's how we die, if we're left alone."

Something inside of Kain shuddered at those words—not 'they', but 'we'—and a dreadful new image painted itself in his mind, overtop of the canvas of Kiryuu being mauled by ravenous, red-eyed fiends. The new portrait was of a skeletally gaunt Kiryuu, his skin as pale and translucent as the thinnest vellum, clawing feebly at a bed of bones as his fingers turned to dust.

Kain thrust the image away with a violent mental spasm, but he couldn't unsee what he had seen and he couldn't unhear what he had heard. Was _that_ really how Kiryuu thought of himself—as some crawling horror that should never have been alive?

Already, Kiryuu had returned his gun to its holster and was brushing the flakes of desiccated corpse from his silver hair with a calm indifference that chilled Kain. Before the noble could even begin piecing together the shards of his thoughts, the hunter was striding off down the tunnel, leaving the grisly scene in his wake the way he must have left so many others. But Kain was stuck in place. The physical distance between them seemed infinitesimal in comparison the vast mental gulf.

At the bend in the tunnel that would take him out of sight, Kiryuu paused and glanced back at the noble over his shoulder. "Just go home, if you can't handle it."

Kain jolted, remembering why he was there, and hastened after his hunter. Whatever else happened, so long as Kiryuu was alive, Kain's doubts and worries could wait.

* * *

><p>Six sweeps later, and Kain had become inured to the sight and stink of the wretches infesting the tunnels.<p>

"Last one," Kaito called out, referring a stretch of tunnel that, as he had explained, connected to an auxiliary drainage system that had been superannuated for decades. "I'll take point this time," the older hunter informed Kiryuu. The false note of casualness in his voice was painfully apparent, and Kain exchanged a tense look with Ruka. This tunnel must be where Kiryuu had been injured, nearly killed.

"I can do it," Kiryuu objected.

"Then I'll go with you," Kaito said after a pause. "Kain, you stay here."

"No," Kiryuu disagreed sharply with his friend. "I don't need you."

Kaito's hands were on his hips. "I'm not _asking_," he barked authoritatively.

"Neither am I," Kiryuu shot back, eyes blazing with sudden violet fire.

Kaito fumed, glaring around the damp and dirty basement chamber, and rumpled his ash-colored hair irritably. Kiryuu glared fixedly at the hunter. "I know what you're thinking," Kaito accused suddenly, pointing a finger at Kiryuu. "And it's ridiculous. You know that?"

"Shut up!" Kiryuu snapped. "You don't know anything!" His cheeks were flushed with emotion.

Kain frankly stared. He had rarely seen this sort of heated response from the silver-haired hunter. Kiryuu's usual mode of anger was frosty—glacial, even. Kain was fascinated. Ruka, on the other hand, was gazing fixedly at her manicured nails with a mixture of disdain and embarrassment.

"Oh, really?" Kaito demanded. "So you're _not_ thinking that only an ex-human should put down ex-humans?"

Kiryuu's eyes flashed. "I'm going," he growled. "You're not."

Kaito's nostrils flared and his shoulders lifted as he drew a deep, steadying breath. He turned his scowl suddenly on Kain, who had been doing an excellent impression of a wall. Despite their temporary alliance, it was still disquieting, the noble realized, to be singled out by a hunter's gaze like that.

"I smell so much as a drop of his blood," the older hunter informed Kain in a low, menacing tone, "and I'll be wearing your hide for a hat and your guts for garters."

There was a slight choking noise, and Kain saw Ruka cover her mouth to stifle her laughter. It was the last time that day that any of them felt like laughing.

* * *

><p>At first Kain thought the scent of Kiryuu's blood, exotic and tantalizing, was only a figment of his depraved imagination, but as they slipped silently down the tunnel, the scent became overwhelming, and mixed nauseatingly with the rank stench of Stage III disease and decay. Kain had already come to associate the latter with a primal dread and loathing that originated from deep in his belly.<p>

Just when the odor had grown so visceral that Kain's meager breakfast of blood substitute was threatening to revisit him, Kiryuu drew to a halt.

"Don't interfere," the hunter began, meeting Kain's eyes guardedly.

A dozen protests bubbled at Kain's lips, but he swallowed them back and nodded. He agreed with Kaito's attitude, privately, and certainly there was no question that Kain would do whatever was necessary to protect Kiryuu, whether he liked it or not, but this was hardly the moment to argue about it.

The hunter nodded in reply, and then, to Kain's dismay, crouched and began crawling into a drainage pipe set into the wall. The pipe was made of corrugated metal, spotted with orange rust, and it was no more than two feet in diameter, which forced Kiryuu to make his way as much by wriggling as by crawling.

Kain's heart began jumping in his throat at the very sight of the claustrophobic cylinder. It had been a long time since he'd suffered a panic attack from his phobia, but if there was ever a time to relapse, it was now. Yet there was no help for it. Kain bent, shuddering, and began pulling himself after Kiryuu on limbs made rubbery by stifled panic.

For a dozen yards, they crept like rats through the stifling, moist, fetid darkness, while Kain's heart thumped so loudly that he was sure Kiryuu heard it. In the erratic illumination of the flashlight, Kain saw disarticulated bones scattered here and there, most of them from small mammals, none of them fresh. The scent of Kiryuu's days-old blood was the only hint that there might be anything living in that hellhole, and Kain seized on it as a lifeline, letting himself grow intoxicated by the aroma to distract himself from his phobia.

At last, there was an end to the hateful pipe, and Kain scrambled out unsteadily into an earthen chamber. The rocky ceiling was too low for him to stand, and so he kneeled beside Kiryuu, staring at the grisly tableau spotlighted by the hunter's beam.

Two tiny, gaunt figures were crouched at the other end of the chamber. Ratted clumps of muddy hair clung to their heads, obscuring reddened eyes. Their skin, hanging loosely over their bones, was caked with dirt and filth. They were children, or once had been.

Kain hissed in revulsion at the very idea of their creation, and turned his eyes away. Kiryuu, however, gazed at them steadily.

The smaller of the figures moved suddenly, like a spider skittering, toward Kiryuu, and Kain reacted instinctively to counter the attack, but an iron bar struck his chest, knocking him backward. It was Kiryuu's arm, holding him back, and in the split-second of that delay, the smaller creature had attached itself to Kiryuu's other arm and was gnawing hungrily at the hunter's wrist.

Kain lunged forward, only to freeze at the last instant at the sound of Kiryuu's voice.

"You promised!" Those flashing violet eyes were accusing and disappointed. "You promised not to interfere. Did you lie?"

Kain opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it again. Mute, disbelieving, impotent, he watched as the wretched little fiend savaged his lover's flesh. Yet there was no scent of fresh blood. The creature was too feeble, Kain realized, its fangs too rotted and its claws too flimsy, to so much as scratch the hunter's skin.

The tiny creature worked its way up Kiryuu's arm, clinging to the hunter with bird-like talons, trying in vain to reach the blood that pulsed just beneath the skin. Kiryuu rested his hand on its head, lightly, and when it reached the hunter's throat, Kiryuu gathered the small creature into his arms and held it tightly, pressing his cheek to its filthy hair, and stroking its head and its back with his hands. Presently, the other, slightly larger creature began to creep across the chamber, and, as Kain continued to watch in frozen incredulity, Kiryuu pulled them both into his lap and embraced them with a soft affection the noble had never dared to hope the sober version of Kiryuu possessed.

In Kain's dazed mind, two facts snapped together like pieces in a puzzle. These creatures were incapable of rending Kiryuu's flesh with the ferocity that had produced Kiryuu's wounds. On the day in question, there had only been one person present who was strong enough to threaten Kiryuu's life—Kiryuu himself. But why would Kiryuu spill his own blood? He would know better than anyone the futility of that action.

The noble cast further afield for the missing pieces. In his mind, he saw again the scene in the warehouse, where he had found Kiryuu mid-coitus with a group of E's. Several pieces clicked together in rapid succession, before Kain could stop them. The noble had tried his best to avoid dwelling on all the implications of that incident—the fact that Kiryuu must have gone there when he was sober, that he would have stayed there after he was sober, for hours, perhaps sleeping in a bed of bones not unlike this one, back-to-back with the very creatures he had dedicated his life to exterminating.

There were still pieces missing, but the picture was becoming clearer, and Kain could no longer turn his eyes from it. Kiryuu had been rejected by both hunters and vampires, and, in turn, he had rejected them, claiming ex-humans alone as his brethren. They were his tribe, his people. Kain had wondered why Kiryuu fought so hard to protect humans despite having no apparent affection for them. Now he understood. It was not humans Kiryuu wanted to protect, but rather ex-humans. He no longer hunted because he was a hunter, but, as Kaito had said, because he believed these creatures should be killed by one of their own, as a kind of final mercy.

Kain's heart sank deeper and deeper as this picture revealed itself to him. He felt helpless and bereft in the wake of the revelation. The understanding that should have brought him closer to Kiryuu seemed to have carried him away instead.

A sudden shot echoed through the chamber, and a cloud of dust billowed through the small space. Kain squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again a moment later, the dust was falling to the ground like a gruesome mockery of snow, and Kiryuu's arms were empty. The hunter's face was a brittle mask on the verge of breaking.

"I thought they might be _hers_," Kiryuu muttered.

"Hers?" Kain repeated blankly.

"Shizuka's," Kiryuu clarified. The name seemed to pain him. Kain felt foolish and guilty for forcing it from him. "She—liked children. So I thought there was a chance…since I ate her life…" He shrugged awkwardly. "It didn't work, obviously."

Kain reached for Kiryuu and did the only thing he could. He did for Kiryuu what the hunter had done for the children. But the hunter's body was as hard and unyielding in his arms as the rusty pipes around them. Kain held on until gradually, by degrees, Kiryuu softened, his shape molding to Kain's. The noble could only hope that his actions were less futile than the hunter's.

* * *

><p>The ride back to the academy was silent. All four of them were brooding—Kaito behind the wheel, Ruka beside him, with Kain and Zero in the backseat. Eventually, despite his usual state of vigilance, Zero surrendered to his exhaustion and allowed the gentle vibration of the car to lull him into slumber.<p>

When he woke, his head was in Kain's lap, and the noble's fingers were stroking his hair gently. For a moment, Zero stayed still, permitting the gesture. Then he sensed someone else watching, and sat up stiffly, refusing to return Ruka's gaze.

Kaito brought the car to a halt before the academy's gates, and Ruka exited the car with her usual elegant grace, melting into the velvet twilight like a mirage. Kain took a little longer to leave, and remained waiting politely just beyond hearing distance.

"I'm sorry," Kaito said stiffly. "I shouldn't have asked you to go."

"It's nothing," Zero replied. An obvious lie of the sort they always told themselves.

"Are you going to be all right? Do you need—"

"I'm fine," Zero cut the older hunter off.

Kaito glared in Kain's direction. "I'll be around."

Zero grunted in acknowledgement and jumped out of the car before Kaito could offer anything else. He fell into stride easily beside Kain. There was no need for words between them.

At his door, however, an unexpected visitor was waiting. It was Aidou. Zero scowled at the small blonde, and reached for the nearest weapon instinctively.

"Ah, my dear sweet—" the foolish noble began in a grandiose tone.

The look on his face when Zero's knife thunked into the door jamb next to him did a little to lift the hunter's spirits. "Get lost, leech," Zero growled.

"There's no wish I'd rather grant you," the blonde answered, looking sideways at the quivering blade. "But Kaname-sama requests the pleasure of your company."

Kain drew his breath in sharply, and an indecipherable look passed between the cousins. Zero felt a prickle of unease, but shook it off.

"I'll see him tomorrow," he answered, putting his key into the lock.

"It's about the, uh, _you know_," Aidou hinted nervously.

Zero glanced at the obnoxious waste of space in spite of himself.

"We might have an idea. I mean, we do have an idea. I mean, _I_ have an idea. But it wasn't my idea! I mean…" The blonde sighed and hung his head. "I mean, I really just need you to come with me."

"Tomorrow," Zero repeated, opening his door.

"Wait, Kiryuu!" Aidou tried to interject, but it was too late. Zero had stepped inside, and the door had slammed shut behind him of its own accord.

Complex arrays of symbols, foreign to Zero's eye, flared to life in the walls, floor, and ceiling, but Zero scarcely saw them. His gaze was held captive by the man sitting in the desk chair, who calmly dog-eared the page of the book he was reading, before turning to face Zero.

"Hello, brother," Ichiru said.

* * *

><p><em><span>Author's Notes<span>: This is a little short and could maybe use some polishing, but I figured I should just go ahead with it rather than make you wait any longer. I think I rewrote the final scene in the tunnels about 10 times, and I'm still not completely satisfied with it. I really don't know when I might post next, but now that I've finally ended one arc of the story and started the next, I'm feeling a bit more motivated to write. Reviews help, too. :)_


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